a tail to depart from

there was a day in 2018 during the six months I’d returned here with the desperate hope of seeing Persephone. I walked all the way from Oak Park to Berkley on a hot summer day. it was a devastating day…. as you know, I reached the door but was turned away and had to walk all the way back. it reminded me of a chapter in Katherine (de Roet) by Anya Seton. and as I walked I paralleled our lives ….i remember looking down at the ground as I was almost all the way back. I saw the strangest thing on the ground. It was the black tail of a squirrel —just the tail, like road kill. I remember, I looked all around me for the body of it. There was none. I went around the corner as I approached the shithole I was staying off nine mile and was startled by a black squirrel that jumped in my path— missing a tail 

I don’t know why but I often think of this and that squirrel since that day. so much like another day…. another hundred million miles before I can lay my baby down