Luke 10:30

Midday and mid-track, a possum
lists to starboard like a torpedoed supply vessel
and equally powerless
to rid itself of the flies gathered at its muzzle
which we take as a sign it’s died. I’m not surprised
at the possums’s roundness: confirmation—
if needed—how, in mocking compensation,
death inflates that which it leaves.
But the possum isn’t dead, though nearly.
How far from, we can’t be sure—how far,
we might ask, is any living thing?—for its left
front foot slow-combs the air: to worry
the flies, to drag itself to cover, to summon
surrender? You turn back at me in tears. I look
around for a stick thick enough to put it out
of its misery, not that I could do anything about it—
more it’s the kind of mercy one should show—
and then I remember how possums,
from abundance of fear as other creatures, deceive
predators by assuming death, trading in its currency, spending
hours in apparent end. With even death
uncertain, how do any of us believe? You won’t
walk past the possum, as if to do so is to cross
in front of the altar, to break a promise.