GOAT
By:John Kinsella
Goat gone feral comes in where the fence is open
comes in and makes hay and nips the tree seedlings
and climbs the granite and bleats,through its line-
through-the-bubble-of-a-spirit-level eyes it tracks
Our progress and bleats again.Its Boer heritage
is scripted in its brown head,floppy basset-hound ears,
And wind-tunnelled horns,curved back for swiftness.
Boer goats merged prosaically into the feral population
to increase carcass quality.To make wild meat.Purity
cult of culling made vastly more profitable.It's a narrative.
Goat has one hoof missing-just a stump where it kicks
and scratches its chin,back left leg hobbling,counter-
balanced on rocks.Clots of hair hang like extra legs
off its flanks.It is beast to those who'd make devil
out of it,conjure it as Pan in the frolicking growth
of the rural,an easer of their psyches when drink
and blood flow in their mouths.To us,it is Goat
Who deserves to live and its "wanton destruction"