Moles
Moles - meaning Summary
Hidden Lives, Full Appetite
The poem observes moles as hidden, energetic creatures moving beneath fields and gardens. Their tunnels briefly mark the surface before rain erases them, emphasizing how little of their lives humans can see. Yet the speaker does not treat their obscurity as failure. The moles' persistent digging, feeding, living, and dying become an image of wholehearted existence: a life with no grand achievement except engagement with the rich physical world.
Read Complete AnalysesUnder the leaves, under the first loose levels of earth they're there -- quick as beetles, blind as bats, shy as hares but seen less than these -- traveling among the pale girders of appleroot, rockshelf, nests of insects and black pastures of bulbs peppery and packed full of the sweetest food: spring flowers. Field after field you can see the traceries of their long lonely walks, then the rains blur even this frail hint of them -- so excitable, so plush, so willing to continue generation after generation accomplishing nothing but their brief physical lives as they live and die, pushing and shoving with their stubborn muzzles against the whole earth, finding it delicious.
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