Little Mole Mother

a sort-of election response

Another poem from my dissertation, asking to be shared now after the election results. Who am I to say ‘no’?

Maybe the poem is about moles, but maybe it’s a metaphor for something else. For me, it’s both.

As always, it’s good to listen along while reading.

x

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

My husband tells me,
moles get stuck in urban places. 
“They have no corridors”, he says 
in between mouthfuls. 
I'm frozen, fork in hand,
trying to understand 
what the hell he means by “corridor”. 

My stomach lurches in realization. 
I look to our garden fence, 
eyes widening in new and 
terrible understanding. 

I scan my horizon and see how land has been made into plots. 
Divvied up so there’s no mistake over what’s mine. 

Somewhere, there's a little mole mother
trying to get back to her little mole babies. 
I can feel her panic surging as she scurries along 
a new barrier, desperate for a break. 

How could we* forget about her? 
Why would we put our separation above her?  

Such strange creatures are we. 
Imposing our closed-in-ed-ness on all others, 
so that we may sit alone in rooms without ceilings.  

I pick up my fork and begin to eat again, 
forever changed. 
I’ve learned something I can’t unknow: 
we care more about fences than about moles.

* “We” doesn’t refer to everyone. But rather to those of us indoctrinated by separation. Those of us who built fences without considering the myriad forms of life and love around us.