A Mole of Sorts

The digging creature has been at work again
out there — first a modest trough with a crest
of dry earth, fit for a starling or a thrush
to rest in. No big deal except to some yellow ants
doing repairs, carrying stuff on their hods.

Next day the hole was deeper,
deeper and wider, encroaching on the lawn
which yielded inch by inch each clump of turf

as though to a pendulum or scythe.

 

Asleep, I sat talking to an animal:
three-, four-foot long with silky white fur

and slim interminable fingernails
lucid as biro shafts or goose quills.

They made the plasticky click

of knitting needles as he waved them

in front of his pink snout as if to dry

the shining varnish. He was indeed

he declared to me a mole of sorts.

 

In a question of days, two weeks at most,
the lavender, the rose bush, the bay plant,
the bindweed, the lilac tree, the brambles

and the potato vine had disappeared

leaving a long rectangular pit

like the foundations of a house
that would never be built, never be lived in.

Then I suppose that was the job done
and the digger moved on to another plot. 

 

(From Ink Stone, 2003)