The Goats

Goat1

The clouds release the rain at dawn
Onto the crazy goats that climb
Atop the double-storied barns
That are painted red and unused .
The horizontal pupils gaze
The periphery of the glade
To see the sun peep from behind
The parting thunderheads aflash .

The woodland hides the horizon
For the groundlings near jaggéd wire ;
But once trip-trapping on tin roofs,
Angular eyes mark foreign fields .
The earliest domestic stock
Peers across green and wonders :
Nannies, billies, and cabritos ;
The flock of grandfather ibex .

The kids linear, parallel,
Crowd the matriarch to receive
Three point five percent butterfat ;
Without shepherds the livestock stands,
No farmhouse appears near the scene .
These quadrupeds of silly voice,
Without the aid of husbandry,
Magically subsist apart .

To approach might cause them to faint
or rather to leap from sharp points
In the moment of assembly,
Two species curiously face,
Play . The fenceposts are split and rotten,
The barbed-wire dulled by corrosion .
The goats know the wall is feeble ;
Nature will swallow them in weeks .

Goat3

Agile with balance of ninjas,
Goats long to scale mountain walls,
Beyond the galvanized barn tops,
Ever heavenward, curious .
An escape artist testing pens,
The animal resists herding,
Constantly nibbling at restraint,
An inquisitive ruminant .