The Mole-catcher
To be a mole-catcher was once deemed a profession
most worthy, hunting these Jersey ploughmen
with their digger feet and squiffy eyes and velveteen sheen
and even a cream-white breed in some parishes.
In garden and field, through humus and sod, they tunnel,
squirmy mammals nuzzling close in warm dark earthy pits and
snuffling the dense chocolate dark loam, earth miners nose-diving
through truffle brown, snaffling and snouting the nut rich ground
in swims through soil, carving subterranean highways with shovel
feet.
Their neat little heaps punctuate green turf with soft sifted
earth,
nosing up towards brilliantine stars they are too blind to see.
They flagrantly ignore our boundaries, true ramblers knowing
that under turf all earth is free, criss-crossing our land
nudging up little piles of disregard.
Perhaps the mole-catcher would once have worn a waistcoat made
of their neat little skins as with hands brown and sure
and brow ridged and stern he followed them crossways
via their uncharted paths, knowing leaving a few to survive
would protect his trade, becoming wise in their ways?
And perhaps it is true that on moonlit nights,
warmed by a pint or two, he went out to dig a few hillocks
to augment their few, and when postcards came
warning the moles had returned, perhaps he regretted
the traps and the poison blue worms he slipped
into their caves?
For my father knew that one day he too would be
in Le Rouoyaume des taupes, the kingdom of moles,
beached deep in the berried leafy clod,
pressed tight with fusty earth muffling his ears,
not hearing their digger feet scratching the land,
tunnelling free.
© Jacqueline Mézec