For Paul Brookes’ December challenge. I really couldn’t answer these questions about shower-cleaning voles, so here’s a cop-out poem about a water vole just being clean and tidy.

Water vole

Wild in the water,
no more home than a hole
in a muddy bank,

a spick and span round hole
above the flood line perhaps
and perhaps not.

Out of sight of slit-slant fox eyes,
the ferreting marten,
the heron’s beak.

Ripples run, a V of silver
from nose apex,
ephemeral disturbance
of the silken skin of the stream.

Still returns, spick and span,
wild water unruffled,
wild water vole homed.