It is really Spring, warming up to Summer. I hope my poem will bring you a smile. We need smiles. Check my events page for a poetry reading I am party of that is taking place on June 9, 2024 at the Tunnel Top Park near Dog Patch in San Francisco. ( not the Presidio park of the same name.) Bring a folding chair, a hat and there will be even more smiles!
Caprice
— “ I believe I am a honey bee.” — John Patrick Shanley
from the movie Wild Mountain Thyme
A being has got to do what a being’s got to do.
I impressed my personal goat stamp
into wet clay of all my pots’ bottoms. Feet actually.
Hooves, cloven. I pruned the sensitive
hooves of my goat Lilly using special sharp flat scissors
to let her walk and gambol with elan.
If not cut or worn off on stones
goat hooves become like curled long fingernails,
folded over, distorting the pads, called frogs.
The cloves of their cloven hooves are like pincers
to hold on to rocks, rock steady.
Maybe that is why I love my running shoes.
Goats are canny, grumpy, clever.
Useful, tough old goats. They do not care
what you think about them. Unexpected.
Subsist on thorns and then be picky,
prickly. Want to push you away, clearly in charge.
Iris of each eye a rectangle slit
like venomous snake eyes only horizontal.
Devil eyes. Under-appreciated, useful survivors.
I believe I am a goat.
Heather Saunders Estes 