No matter how old I get I still think these things are the annunaki, them and skunks!

Possums

Sheila Black

A kind of thrill—to lie on a road
and flatten yourself,

white fur like a ball of winter,

like the March blossoms on the fruit trees,
each one folded in like

the fledgling that never made it
from the nest.

They do this when they feel threatened,
remain motionless

even when curious people come prod
them with sticks,

stiffening their pearly claws as a tree stiffens
its twigs for winter. What is it to be dead?

The possums know—that eternal watchfulness
by which the dead in their stately wisdom

watch us
who keep moving.

---

When you play possum, you play dead. If your cat has an alarming habit of pretending to be dead, you can say that she likes to play possum.

You can also use the phrase play possum to mean “play stupid,” or pretend not to understand what’s going on. It’s been a fairly common saying since the early 1800’s, and it comes directly from the nocturnal possum’s habit of faking its own death in order to fend off predators. Definitions of play possum

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

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/opossum-2/