Swerve

One night I swerved
to hit a shine-

eyed possum
on the yellow line

in the double curve
near my mother’s house.

It was my home then, too,
meaning that I rested there,

but as I’m still awake all
these years on, it’s difficult

to remember the warmth
of the bed. The heartbeat

after I swerved
to hit that damn possum

was the second I realized
I’d missed her,

when my guts fell heavy
and my lungs wound tight.

Who was I to have steered
into those brilliant eyes?

Who was I to hope
to mar a curve with blood.

I could not face
the rearview mirror,

and more, I would not
find the possum’s gaze,

gone missing with the passage
of the headlights.

Tundra

Days after a soft white owl landed on a farm in Brevard,
North Carolina, I read about his arrival and the questions
falling like fat snowflakes around him: From where did he
fly, and how did he arrive? Even in an irruptive migration

beyond the bounds of his usual Northern borders,
a snowy owl should never lower himself to our mountains—
a tragedy he surely felt when the currents he sailed waned
humid and warm. For those of us who lived here, though:

such a landing. A king of the north among dewy Southerners,
a pure white pillar of feathers resting in the shadow
of a long-leaf pine. I don’t know who crowned him
Tundra, but from counties around, peering naturalists

and birders made the pilgrimage for a glimpse into
his amber-globe eyes. When he was deemed unfit
for release, having barely survived his tumble down
a dozen latitudes, half his arctic size and starving,

a man volunteered to rehabilitate him. He attended
our owl to nursing homes and summer camps, and we loved
Tundra—yes, we loved him for choosing us, for deigning
to stay in our corner. When he fell ill after three years—

news told of a neurological disorder—we felt the still
rest of his abdication. And yes, when we read of his death,
we wept—heads bowed in the haze of the Southern sun,
our king of the north gone finally cold.