A reluctant subject, anxious of pausing
her foraging for some tasty insects to snack on,
a female Virginia opossum sniffs once
to proof the absence of threat, and then
sits up in the front yard, her ghost-white
face glowing in the tree-filtered lamplight
seeping weakly into the pre-dawn darkness,
the same face that peered from Algonquin woods,
the same black eyes that scientists say
watched dinosaurs live and die, that
saw past the dinosaurs and Algonquins,
past the settlers and builders of cities.
Although her kind have suffered their losses,
to coyotes and dogs, to redneck hunters
with shotguns, to the noisy machines
hurtling with ungodly speed down streets
and highways; the species has survived,
virtually unchanged, and death to her
is only a game that she has often played
and so far won. She might climb a tree
to survey her options, might enjoy
a starlight swim if the opportunity
presents itself, but she will not run away
from death; she will walk, slowly,
at her own pace, taking another
solitary journey, and if death chooses
to follow her, that is the business of death,
not of possums, to whom death is only
a trick of last resort that sometimes
works and sometimes doesn’t.
My particular possum, very much alive
and grown tired of posing, raises
a four-finger wave, idly licks her palm,
and ambles off to finish her scavenging and find
some dark, safe place to sleep the day away.
Copyright 2016
T. Allen Culpepper
