On feet bare like a desert saint’s, it pads
across the porch and toward the dry cat food
my wife pours out for strays. It doesn’t scare
when I stomp, bellow, toss a pebble
at its rump, just hisses at me, geezerly,
and keeps on chewing. Eyes like little radio
dials and fur like coal snow, smog sky, or anything
smudged, dirty, it reminds me of the boy
in school we called Possum for how he slept
through class and how his eyes were beaded black,
his nose sharpened to needle fine. When at last
I knock it off the porch with one quick blow
from a snow shovel, it scuttles under
a shrub and disappears into the house’s
cracked stone foundation, knowing more than I—
beneath the sound of footfall, chair-scrape, voice
descending like the ash of distant fire—
the saint’s strange way to practice death.
—Benjamin Myers
We launched the First Things 2023 Year-End Campaign to keep articles like the one you just read free of charge to everyone.
Measured in dollars and cents, this doesn't make sense. But consider who is able to read First Things: pastors and priests, college students and professors, young professionals and families. Last year, we had more than three million unique readers on firstthings.com.
Informing and inspiring these people is why First Things doesn't only think in terms of dollars and cents. And it's why we urgently need your year-end support.
Will you give today?
