Poorimole - //top\\

But that night, a child dropped a triangular pastry—a hamantasch—into a crack in the ground. The pastry tumbled down, dusted with poppy seeds like little moons. Schmuel touched it. Sweet. Strange. And for one moment, he felt not poor, but royal. He put a poppy seed on his nose like a jester’s bell.

He began to dig upward. Not to leave the earth, but to leave a small tunnel open—just in case, next year, the child dropped another crumb of joy. poorimole

And Schmuel, the poorimole, wept—not from sorrow this time, but because even in the dark, someone had looked for him. But that night, a child dropped a triangular

“What reversal could there be for me?” Schmuel whispered to a passing earthworm. “I am a mole who remembers nothing but dark. My feast is roots. my mask is my own face.” He put a poppy seed on his nose like a jester’s bell

Above, the child whispered into the hole: “I see you, little mole. Happy Purim.”

Deep under the garden, where the old rose bushes tang their roots like forgotten prayers, lived a mole named Schmuel. He was called the poorimole by the other burrowing creatures—not because he lacked worms or tunnels, but because his eyes, two tiny black beads, always seemed to be weeping. Not tears, exactly. A kind of dampness, as if the weight of the earth above pressed sorrow out of him.