Most folk drown voles in a bucket

Folk that bait traps with apple, scheme to gas their burrows,

till the ground to destroy their homes, slice them as they nest.

Nuisance animal, lawn pest, vermin, critter, infestation.

Folk that call earth dirt, prefer to play on astroturf.

I see you, meadow vole, under the mulch mat, bobbing like electric

toes beneath a sheet. In gaps I glimpse your grey-brown blur.

Round-headed rodent, root raider, soil aerator, hamster

in the wrong place. Food for kestrels, barn owls, badgers.

Vole, let your runways and tunnels teach me

to spare their woven hay roofs from my heavy tread –

soft-covered cylinders, earthen channels, in parts mossy

scattered with hollowed snails, gateways to retrain my eye.

There are guards over the apple trees, the young orchard is close mown.

Yet all the grass around is long. Ring bark the maple, girdle the wild plum.

M.C.A. Gibson