Admonition to a goat

 

AN ADMONITION

 

Goat.  Your tether's outside -- not here indoors

among the canine, feline, rodent loves.

They can be mostly harmless with their paws.

Please do not clamber on me. You have hooves.

This is another poem written in response to a prompt from Jo Bell's book 52: write a poem a week. Start now. Keep going.  Chapter 51 -- the penultimate chapter -- noted that very few poems had been written on the subject of goats, and encouraged readers to make good that deficiency.  It is now six years since the book was published, and we may hope that the deficiency no longer exists.

I have very little experience of goats.  I met one in 1979, whose behaviour was as reproved in the poem.

The poem's washed up here on the blog, having been deployed by me in a Twitter conversation in March 2021.  I can't remember what that was about, but it renders the poem ineligible for entry in most competitions, and thus entitled to this present place.