The Skinny Possum

I watched a skinny possum dart
between parked cars, aligned imperfectly
outside the University of Sydney's
English Department, where hordes
of undergraduate students roam
backwards and forwards every hour,
like herds of migrating Wildebeast
taking the same path, following
the same tracks, each hour; all day.

That skinny possum could move,
which surprised me almost as much
as the possum must have been
surprised itself, to find itself,
in broad daylight, cutting across
the well-worn paths of lumbering
English Lit. Majors, Honours
candidates in Early Anglo-Saxon
or Accountancy and Tort Law
specialists making up their credit
count with an Easy-A in Arts.

I barely caught a glimpse of it, to tell
the truth; four furry legs going helter-
skelter underneath a half-parked Ford
and a grey-black bushy tail vanishing
before my disbelieving gaze, unused
to possums, which I'd always thought
were fat, slow-moving and reddish
brown.  All of which just goes to show
that a prize-winning undergraduate
like me knows diddley-squat about
Australian marsupials; not how fast
they move or where they might appear
or disappear before uncertain eyes.
.