Floppy ears and a sweet tooth,
the ruddy-haired bovid lips at
a vest’s pocket, mischievous
after smelling stashed cookies.
As the vet checks on its mending
fetlock, perhaps the goat considers
itself somehow lucky to happen upon
her cache of chocolate chips.
Admittedly, cookies are delicious,
but the goat’s luck is something greater—
A week ago, it arrived at the hospital
calm as if nothing was amiss, until
a glance at its left forelimb revealed
a foot twisted around 180 degrees.
The ruminant couldn’t know it, but
a time existed when such an injury
would land you with diced onions
and carrots, chili and bay leaves,
curry powder, tomatoes, and broth
to simmer in a pot over low heat.
But the goat has the good fortune
that today its companionship can
justify a sizeable hospital bill—
the sight of hooves gamboling up
a homemade hilltop of old tires,
a soft muzzle eating out the hand,
the head nuzzling for a lavish scratch
all outweighing a sumptuous meal.
After probing beneath skin down
to bone by X-ray and discovering
no breaks but a joint disarticulated,
the goat lies on an exam room table
anaesthetized, where a handful
of vets holds it steady, one of them
taking the cannon in one hand
and the reversed foot in his other
to torque the fetlock, audibly popping
it back into proper articulation.
Now recovering in a stable, the goat
cranes its neck for pocketed cookies,
circling around the vet who herself
must turn with her patient to get a better
look at its limb, seeing how well
it bears the weight placed upon it,
the footsteps that she eyes being owed
less to sound bones and medical
acumen and more to a changing menu,
the lifesaving inedibility of endearment.
