Without central heating either, eh?
A ballad of (happily) lost times?
Doug
On Nov 19, 2014, at 9:33 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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.
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
that we are only
as we find out we are
Charles Olson
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