Mole Hills (Poetry)

Brown heaps of fresh-dug earth along the verge
a mountain range in miniature — the work
of flipper-feet — a creature hardly seen
who spends his whole life digging through the dark.

Such industry — his excavations stretch
beside the busy road — thrust up through grass
where tunnels run beneath — a subway maze
so close to where commuters thunder past.

Who notices these contours so low down
or gives a thought to all that energy
expended by a sightless engineer
whose labyrinthine ways we never see?

His pyramids loose dirt washed smooth by rain
erode away — sink down and overgrow —
who wonders where such thoroughfares extend —
those hidden highways spreading out below?

His world is night — his roads are all his own
instinct draws the plans inside his head
he and all his kind invisible —
we seldom note his slow determined tread

until he breaks the surface — kicks the dirt
and dumps it like it’s rubble not required —
spoils the smooth-cut golf course or the lawn
rolled and watered — tended and admired.

A nuisance now — a small and furtive pest
we smoke his tunnels — fit a neat device
that thumps and sends a tremor through the ground
and so deter (or pay the catcher’s price.)

The meadow’s a much safer place for him —
this miner-mole in overalls so plush —
where he can move small mountains at his will
and tunnel through the black and blameless hush.