ALISON GRANUCCI

ODE TO THE STAR-NOSED MOLE

It came out of the dark, blind   sniffing

for air   not light — it was

ugly & alone & without a thought, I scooped 

up this fleshy star 

into my fleshy palm — two organs

of touch   touching the unknown.

But I was not root or stone, worm or loam,

I had to put him down —

faster than a wink, he disappeared underground.

It was love. There is no other word.  

I longed to follow him down.

                                                                                                If soil were my home —

and my    fossorial nature   alive at last,

                        I’d use my tusky trowel claws

            to throw back the earth to the earth 

and burrow with a fury into the murk      

                                                                      tight corridor of dirt pressing me on

with no need for useless eyes,

I’d touch-bump in a blur, 

            hunting   with my sea anemone nose — twenty-two rays

         that sense my prey’s   electricity   through water & muck —

able to touch twelve things   

            in one second, I’d eat any of the twelve

           deemed grub   not mud —           

          a wonder of evolution, I’d stun worms 

        with my saliva & store them   in my scullery.

                                                                                    If I were not me —

I’d mine a truer tunnel 

my excavation urged                  

ever downward                                                             

by an inner weight                     

where on earth does a soul belong

clawing through rifts & grit    past fossil & rock 

                                  drawn deeper

                                            by a graver current —

                                                      the earth’s pulse

      electric   & receptive.

                                                                                    If I were a star-nosed mole —

I’d raise my own star, 

            ask it to guide me

                                  as I delve

                                  ever more elusive 

                                  to what is always   

                                               churning & iron hot —

                                                my descent toward   the   

                                                                               unreachable   

                                                                               root of all stars.

In this untold below, what prey   but my own fear    would I eat —

                                                                                         and for what would I pray?

To be held by the earth & rest — 

                                                         — and to sense, with my little dipper rays

as I approach the end

                                           how in my blind digging   

                                                                             all I ever touched was God.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alison Granucci is a poet, writer, and woodland gardener living in the Hudson Valley. She has poems published or forthcoming in EcoTheo Review, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, and a book anthology of bird poems by Paris Morning Publications. In 2005, Alison founded Blue Flower Arts, the fist literary speaker’s agency in this country to represent poets, and ran it until she retired at the end of 2019. A 2022 graduate of the Brooklyn Poets Mentorship Program, Alison serves as a poetry reader for The Rumpus and is at work on a book-length manuscript.