The Mole
To the back lawn at Mead Close
Cottage, Orchard Lane, Old Boars Hill,
in which I froze with family,
winter of 1980,
and on into the spring
when all was wakening,
the moles of Oxfordshire
sent a strong burrower.
Wonderful the small black
mounds of loam out the back
that his invisible might
created in the night,
the unstoppable force
of that soft blind mouse-
like creature! We beamed.
The landlord schemed -
he and his family
in the large front property
wanted perfect turf
for summer croquet.
They knew about property -
wasn’t he a law don
at Oxford University?
where college lawns
had solved the whole mole
problem to eternity
by pouring mole-poison
down mole-holes stealthily!
Shame on the tenants,
mere Australians,
siding with moles
against Old Boars Hill’s
venerable practices!
What could we do but sigh?
Over the back fences
were fields moles went through
at liberty. Wandering there
in Victorian times some
local poet dreamed how
a scholar-gypsy haunts the scene.
While I dreamed, my son attended
Matthew Arnold School that term -
without being taught
a single poem.
His sister dropped her jacket
at the back fence where
a cow almost ate it.
And that was our Oxfordshire.
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