We called her Bandita for her spirit.
She always checked the fences all-way-round,
and last of all the gate, which she learned
the trick of, one day, putting a leg up
on the weighted rope, and pulling down
to let herself into the barn and gorge
on duck feed. "No dumb sheep, Bandita," we
would say, redesigning fence, gate, barn
to accomodate her larger vision of how
a barnyard should be lived in. We came
to value her opinion, and we tried
to understand her when she talked.
Earnestly she stood in the one yard corner
offering a view of that foreign place,
our house, ignoring the ducks and geese
clustered amiably underfoot, and talked
to us by the hour. We'd check her over
and she'd stand in silence; then as we
returned to our other life, she called
to us again. "What's with Bandita?"
"Dunno." But on a Friday she went down.
The symptoms were of hardware disease,
not bloat: bad enough either way; if she
had been bought to breed, we'd call
the vet, but every vet call is one
less pair of shoes. Bandita was a gift,
for mowing and for meat. "Don't breed her,"
they'd said, "She's too inbred herself."
Did we do right or wrong to take her,
not knowing of the pile of rusted bolts
in the long grass? Do we know enough
to take so carelessly these lives
into our lives? Alone I trudged out
to the barn, and, speaking words
of empty consolation to those anxious ears,
I looked into her frosted eyes, and placed
behind her wooly skull at once
the iron rod that speaks with leaden grace.