Skunk Day
Sometimes truth comes in a cage, with neighbors and second hand cheer
There was a time
I imagined great things
were about to happen:
felt in my bones that something
was out there, not far beyond
reach, and there would be
a moment I would get there
or it would come to me and
maybe a trove of baubles
banishing dreariness and doubt
would open life up.
Today, the truer truth:
a skunk blundered
into the cage we’d put out
to catch a woodchuck,
the critter’s white stripe on black
twisting, curling, urgent shiny nose
pushing top to bottom, upending
the bowl of cat food he’d emptied.
his hunger his downfall,
and I think, isn’t that just the way.
I text my peaceable neighbor
and he comes right over, and so does
his gentle wife, and I’m so happy they’re
here standing in the lively grass
wary with me of what the skunk might
do. He hasn’t sprayed yet, I say, but
then as if on notice we smell it, maybe just one
desperate squirt of tocsin, and we back right up,
and it’s sort of comical, how the skunk’s in charge
keeping us stuck between stink and release.
Then Bob pulls on thick gloves and
sails a tarp over the cage like a fisherman
and once the skunk can’t see him, Bob creeps close,
reaches under and pries up the metal grate,
skipping sweet nothings or howdeedo’s or
even, sorry, champ — we didn’t mean this cage for you.
Then wordlessly Bob steps away…
one moment…
two, three:
the varmint doesn’t
know he’s free. Learned helplessness,
Beth says, waiting, and we cluck
and agree what a powerful idea
and isn’t that what’s wrong
with half of us…
But then he
sees it, the cage’s open door
And he gets it and bursts out, hustles
into the bushes, never looking back,
his thick white-tipped tail an up yours wake,
and, relieved, we wander back inside
feeling less caged ourselves,
savoring absurd little blips
of second-hand cheer.
