Her Pig
This beautiful sow,
her face wide and open,
warm friendly, secure, comfortable,
The hide is dark red, healthy, lustrous,
sturdy, capable, mammaries full and draining milk
Piglets firm and round, long, and well developed
So much potential
The dream of a 10 year old girl
who sees the world as her peach,
with no reason not to pick it,
who scraped together the money, her own,
to buy the piglet, showered it with love,
read, planned, and dreamed,
about breeding, and rearing more piglets,
making a list of potential customers lining up for piggies,
counting cash in her head,
counting the years of this relationship, her pig.
So much potential, even now
Even now these thing show so much potential,
laid out in the bright sun here on the gut pile,
the little piggies presented lifeless on the thawing snow,
as we make an offer to the ravens and coyotes,
after a swift and timely slaughter,
before she got really sick and her meat would spoil,
hours of fretting and strenuous effort couldn’t save the piglets anyway,
her uterus ruptured and all was lost,
except now we struggle through grief to wrestle a semblance of sanity
where all this potential can have some value,
these lessons were not what we had intended,
and not matter how many times I try to explain
in a calm and wise fatherly way,
even to me,
this makes no sense.
CBR 4/10/08