Visitor---Prose

They sit at the red Formica table, quietly buttering their morning toast, while watching her through the window glass. It is as much a daily routine, as brushing their teeth. How disappointed they would be, if she did not arrive on time. They could even set their clocks by her comings and going each day, quietly observing her through the kitchen window, as she comes out from behind the tool shed. She will stop, look around, then carefully lumber along beneath the hedge row. Her fine snout aimed in one direction, her eyes squinted down against the rude, gray light, while her body seems to announce...."possum, possum",....as she rocks across the backyard, then slowly meandering over to the northwest corner of the fence, to disappear again, into the weeds of the vacant lot, that lies on the other side. Sipping their coffee, they have remained quietly pensive for a few moments, then once again they will remind each other that they must take care not to mend the gap in the old cedar-wood fence.