Opossum Poem by Jared Carter

Now by the light of the quarter moon
I can make out the shape of the ‘possum
come waddling out of the toolshed
through strange pools of light and dark
on his nightly journey to nowhere -
old codger, old bumbler, leftover bundle
of impractical genes, the only surviving
North American marsupial, who has been
chased by innumerable dogs, stalked
by coyotes and tomcats, beaten by children,
shot at by boys with rusty air rifles -

who now ventures forth on his rounds,
as dim and pale as the sliver of moon -
old throwback, crusader, landlocked
coelacanth, consort to dinosaurs, closest
thing to a fossil that still moves about -
that in one moment rares up and hisses
like a snake, showing all those jagged
fifty teeth, and in the next falls dead
and lets children beat it with sticks
and dogs toss it like a bundle of rags -
but always there is something alive inside,
some primordial creature, some instinct
for survival, that hangs on, biding its time -

old faker, old doormat, you who were born
to be kicked, who keep coming back for more,
who have kept coming back unchanged
for fifty million years, as though working off
some unbelievably bad karma - what is it
you want, living here among us like a curse,
a reminder, an embarrassment? What is it
you seek now, with the moon glinting
in the eastern sky, the trees full of shadow,
and those impossibly icy stars overhead?


First published in Madison County Poets.