a fainting, ghostly presence
with a tail so naked it was
embarrassed to drag behind him.
—Faith Shearin

My mother-in-law and I sat at the kitchen table.  She was eating oatmeal while I read Possum in the Garbage aloud.  Mary doesn’t say much, so I wasn’t sure if she liked the poem or not.  She has her favorites, many memorized in grammar school back in New Jersey.  Somewhere, I have a recording of her reciting Wordsworth’s I wandered lonely as a cloud.