The Stone
Rebecca Foust
You called it a surgical abscission
when I left, our years together
sliced away with a sharp blade,
almost brutally quick & clean.
But for me it was more like drowning
the chipmunk in the shiny tin pail
of this October morning, the rain
suspended like a sheer curtain
between me & the sun. When I saw
the small, soft nose poking out, then in,
then out of the black plastic tunnel
hiding the spring trap, I wanted
to go back inside the warm cabin.
I wanted to go back in time, before
finding the trap, before it was set.
I wanted to let nature & her wolves
take their hungry course, & live on
in ignorance or hope a severed spine
might somehow heal on its own.
Above all, I wanted someone else
to decide. But, something about
Virginia Woolf & the stones
she put in her pockets before wading
out into the Ouse & this creature
right here, where I had to look,
unable to move & in pain. The sun
shimmered the rain into gauze,
hung as if for extreme unction.
I could not not-see it then, what
had to be done & be done by me,
alone. I had all I needed: the pail,
& the pump to fill it with water.
The stone was for mercy.
from the journal THE SOUTHERN REVIEW 
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