A Poem About a Goat
Here at Lillunia we are moved by simple things. We are profoundly influenced by the sound of the ocean at night, the quiet murmurings of dreaming cats, hungry baby birds calling for their mothers and the moon- always the moon.
Last night I read a poem (I am perhaps the last standing poetry reader I know) in the New Yorker. I was moved. I know it is bad wrong and awful to reprint a poem that is not ours- but I am giving full and ecstatic credit to The New Yorker for publishing it and to Mark Doty for composing it. It is called PESCADERO. Lillunia has NO right to this poem except we have the right to love it. If you love animals as much as we do, please read- you will enjoy:
PESCADERO
The little goats like my mouth and fingers,
and one stands up against the wire fence, and taps on the fence board
a hoof made blacker by the dirt of the field,
pushes her mouth forward to my mouth,
so that I can see the smallish squared seeds of her teeth,
and the bristle-whiskers,
and then she kisses me, though I know it doesn't mean “kiss,”
then leans her head way back, arcing her spine, goat yoga,
all pleasure and greeting and then good-natured indifference: she loves me,
she likes me a lot, she takes interest in me, she doesn’t know me at all
or need to, having thus acknowledged me. Though I am all happiness,
since I have been welcomed by the field’s small envoy, and the splayed hoof,
fragrant with soil, has rested on the fence board beside my hand.
-Mark Doty
*published in The New Yorker,
Here at Lillunia we are moved by simple things. We are profoundly influenced by the sound of the ocean at night, the quiet murmurings of dreaming cats, hungry baby birds calling for their mothers and the moon- always the moon.
Last night I read a poem (I am perhaps the last standing poetry reader I know) in the New Yorker. I was moved. I know it is bad wrong and awful to reprint a poem that is not ours- but I am giving full and ecstatic credit to The New Yorker for publishing it and to Mark Doty for composing it. It is called PESCADERO. Lillunia has NO right to this poem except we have the right to love it. If you love animals as much as we do, please read- you will enjoy:
PESCADERO
The little goats like my mouth and fingers,
and one stands up against the wire fence, and taps on the fence board
a hoof made blacker by the dirt of the field,
pushes her mouth forward to my mouth,
so that I can see the smallish squared seeds of her teeth,
and the bristle-whiskers,
and then she kisses me, though I know it doesn't mean “kiss,”
then leans her head way back, arcing her spine, goat yoga,
all pleasure and greeting and then good-natured indifference: she loves me,
she likes me a lot, she takes interest in me, she doesn’t know me at all
or need to, having thus acknowledged me. Though I am all happiness,
since I have been welcomed by the field’s small envoy, and the splayed hoof,
fragrant with soil, has rested on the fence board beside my hand.
-Mark Doty
*published in The New Yorker,
issue dated February 8, 2010
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