For the Skunk Who Lives in the Woodpile I Pass on My Morning Walk
Little Sister, you are like the Spirit
Jesus says is like the wind. You come
and are hidden
and leave a stirring in your wake.
You disturb the mind. You are
so close to the earth
we have not yet earned the gift
of seeing you. All summer
you have hidden
in the fragments of someone’s
ramshackle cabin, but now
it is November and I wonder
where will you go?
Who will smell your perfume
and love you again
like I have?
Who will watch your slick shape,
your feathery tail, dip
into the bare trees an hour
before dawn?
Your body is from the age old
black and white stages of history.
You are elegant as the silver screen
and as remote. Greta Garbo
of the neighborhood, you slip
into evening’s gray gown,
and saunter down to the little farm
where the fat black pig lies
all night in the mud. You are
otherworldly and silent,
sniffling out beetles
and spiders while the moon
slowly rises like your bright wet nose
over my house.
Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s most recent work can be found in Western Humanities Review, Sugar House Review, Ruminate, and South Dakota Review. She is the author of The Marriage of the Moon and the Field (Black Lawrence Press) and The Ache & The Wing (winner of Sundress Publications’ Chapbook Prize). Her work has been awarded New Ohio Review’s NORward Poetry Prize, the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, and the Sherwin W. Howard Award.
Header photo by Holly Kuchera, courtesy Shutterstock.
