Intruder in the dark

 

 

In the darkness still of night

I see a silhouette tense - 

Scampering ’cross my backyard

Jumping on the fence

 

Its long tail gives it away –

A possum yes, it is,

Marauding in my garden

(With neither rent or lease)

 

I cannot see its eyes

Despite the starlit dusk

Perhaps, it peers into me

While both of us, we ask

 

Who is intruding here ?

Interloper of these greens?

Why is it that existence

Of both cannot be seen

 

We claim we own these lands

What of the denizens here?

What right they have to live or die –

What do we even care

 

The possum jumps onto the trees

There is nothing left to fight,

It has to live in shadows now

As creatures of the night

 

But something changes deep within

A burden starts to cease,

As if through this one commune,

I have turned its accomplice

 

I feel no need to guard again

My garden as it grows

For the brigand needs to be guarded too

No longer are we foes

 

Perhaps it is staring back at me

Wonder in its face -

But, it is the least that we can do

For the souls that we displace

 

But will it understand, the beast?

As it climbs the gumtree bark,

Wondering who is still the true

Intruder in the dark…

 

23^rd Nov’2024

Based on a real-life sighting of a possum on my fence, leaping off onto a tree – but not before it turned back and looked at me for a few minutes. It created an epiphany and made me realise how a simple interaction can feel very profound.

Years earlier, one of my favourite authors, Ruskin Bond, wrote pages on his sighting of a lone fox dancing late at night. I dint realise then why could a solitary dancing fox seem so profound, until last evening, when I realised how much can the wilderness or its denizens change our outlook and make us feel humbled on one side, yet powerful, and hence caring on the other side.