Clandestine Inhabitants

the house next door
has been taken by the bank
and well-prior to that, by divorce
then addiction
and in parallel to it all
by the possum family, that emerged nightly
from the collapsed corner of a workshop roof
crumbling invisibly behind its garage

unnoticed, they scratched an ascent
up beams, plywood and scaled the tree bridge
into an overhead continent of night,
collections of june moonlight
unfolded an expansion of our histories
into ceilings of flowering wonder

and these histories contracted, equally unnoticed
in the shadow of that same sky's ability
to oscilate its waveform and ratio
of positive to negative space,
where entire dream seasons
form one atmosphere, an organism whose shadow
can smile a mild summer-smooth lull
into the twitch and quickened blood of its prey

can smile its slick and shards of december
into a misjudged climbhold above
and jagged frostline of jaws below,
poised to catch the young
that fall from our backs

we are all lost to how the sun and moon
cross the sky that particular day

context is all that separates
opportunity from exposure
and one side of that bite
from the other

eventually, a tornado took the overhead tree
they used to climb from that roof
and they're either still inside, likely dead
or they've moved on and we haven't

and we've become
or have always been
the clandestine inhabitants next door