Today's poem is by Steve Straight

Oh, Possum
       

We know them as gray lumps in the road,
with their long rat tails and triangular snouts,
their fate the result of their defense against
oncoming cars, which is to turn and hiss.

But today I find one at the end
of its two-year journey on earth,
which began as a joey no bigger than a raspberry,
now nearly three feet long, nestled and still
amid our lemon thyme,
under the deep blue and green canopy
of the wild indigo.

How often a mysterious creature in nature
sends me to a book or a computer,
as this one does. The only remaining mammal
that waddled past dinosaurs, this cousin
of koala and kangaroo,
night-shift janitor with few peers,
which grooms itself like a cat, consuming
black-legged ticks at five thousand a season.

Nearly immune to rabies, not to mention
the venom of rattlesnakes and cottonmouths,
the possum thrives in our margins
with most of its defenses just bluff
until pushed to its involuntary coma,
leaking foul excretions to ward off harm,
coming to sometimes hours later
with the wink of an ear.

This one is done playing, done working,
having avoided the bobcats, the foxes and owls,
even the three-legged coyote I saw
loping through the back yard just yesterday.
No more carrion, no more spilled seeds,
no more ripe persimmons in autumn.
Just a gentle repose, an ideal death,
a death to be jealous of.

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Copyright © 2022 Steve Straight All rights reserved
from Affirmation
Grayson Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission