Incident In The Potting Shed

Khaki soil
soft mounded
under the rotted floor
of the old shed —
tearing out the boards
I expose a mother possum,
The Mother of All Possums,
the largest I’ve ever seen,
and she’s with at least ten
young ones and every one
is hissing and hating and scaring
me, the man with the shovel
astonished at all those black eyes,
pink mouths, and white little fangs.

In short order I hear everything
from “they make good pets”
to “they make good pies”
from the crew who are working
to get the yard done, but mostly
we’re all a little fascinated for ten minutes
and then annoyed — we’ll have to leave
this part of the job for the day, give her time
to move them.

You’re looking, no doubt, for a moral.
That’s what writers do, and readers do with them —
assign meanings, encode symbolism, 
scrape together a metaphor we all can use 
for glue to hold our lives together.  
Not this time.  Here’s all the meaning:

Clay soil not exposed to light is tan and soft
where the animals dig into it away from our eyes.
Mother possums are fierce in defense of their young.
Baby possums learn everything from momma.
We let them be because there was no reason not to
and it was a good excuse to take a break and talk
about their eyes, their habits, what we know of possums.
In the meantime she dug in with the family to wait us out
and that’s where we left them.  Small moment, 
disruption for all involved, moving on, getting by,
making the best of things.