We have lots of critters in Berkeley. I became acquainted with more than I wanted in the 17 years of creekside dwelling, but that was probably good, since they are plentiful around me now. I live in a backyard cottage, on ground level.

There are birds of course, including the crows that have invaded in the last decade or so and also one visit from a ring-necked pheasant. I’m not considering the insects. The mammalian inhabitants are squirrels and rats and raccoons and skunks and the occasional loner possum.

The possum is really an opossum, and it’s the largest marsupial in our hemisphere. It has a pouch and a prehensile tail. And the possum really does play dead, except it’s not play. I just looked it up, and I read that the dead act is an involuntary reflex – kind of a panic induced trance that besets the animal for up to four hours. The possum has anal sacks like a skunk; foul odor is part of the trance.

Almost two decades ago I walked out of my house one Monday morning and thought I spied a cat corpse at the curb. It was a possum, odorless, well and truly dead.

The curbside corpse appeared a cat to me
until I saw the pointed snout, the head,
the naked tail that made a summary:
this morning showed me possum newly dead.
I nudged the body inches to the street,
but I can’t push it from my thoughts today.
For I am overcast and see defeat
in every corner, colored possum gray.

Tradition says the possum fakes his death,
and old philosophers equate with sleep
the end of life, but here’s a creature left
a shape that will not draw another breath:
enough like me that with relief I’d weep,
enough like us for me to feel bereft.