Dowsing for the Mole at Age Eight

David Stanford Burr

For three days I have allowed the mole
 to augment his Byzantine dominion.
 I have borrowed the kitchen knife
 and knotted it to the hazel branch
 with twine: a proper dowser
 with which to witch the varmint out.

 The serrated blade ruptures the black
 galleries of his blind scuttle;
 he rustles the tunnel with retreat,
 loses me at the labyrinth hub.
 He urges me over the moled quarter-acre
 of the front lawn-his meandering mine.
 His old ways become caved in, stomped down.

 Soon there is only the long corridor -
 balked at both ends. He shuttles back
 and forth between those walls
 that stalk and turn him back again,
 that four-foot artery that is his last
 precinct of instinct. I steady
 my heartbeat, take my time.

 Abruptly, he finds his ambit halved.
_ Lam coiled at the midpoint, timing
 his dartles. The branch trembles;
 then my hand is pulled down sharp
 by that mammal's tiny, frantic heart.