Black Goat

my childhood was watched over by two poetic images
the leaping of black goats over the jagged cliffs of the nearby mountains
and the myriad fragrant flowers in the lilac forest at their feet
in my memory still smoulders like a burning fire
the dance of wild bees in the deep black eyes of a black goat
as she nibbled a thousand lilac blossoms staring at me
there were moments when I felt that the sight and sound and smell
were paralyzed by the flashing apparition before me
by the beauty and communion of two intangible myths
that I dreamt of day and night and from which I fed my life’s poetry

my childhood ended abruptly the day my father threw into the garden
the slender dewy body of the black goat he’d shot hunting
its glassy eyes a mirror of life’s poetry made spalls
the velvety wet snout – a burrow for the warm raspberry of the gun leads
the ringed horns – a splinter of the constellation Taurus
the neck of a Modigliani painting – an arch between the mountain ridge and my poem
muscular legs – the lightning I wish I could get out of the world with
cloven hooves-the roots that pull me back home to Baia de Aramă
while my father skinned my childhood’s hind I knelt
and took her heart in my hands to beat now in this poem
November 23, 2022