Pig

I was searching for a poem. I really wanted one
and it was getting not exactly dark but a green pale
luminous sky just before night and I’d looked in all
the usual places e.g. weather, the season, even love
and so on, but all that appeared was this pig
a kunikuni called Millie. She was asleep
in her stable on a bed of straw and covered
with a Mexican blanket. She shared the shed
with well-stacked logs from a peach tree.
The sound she made was the rhythm of snore in and,
then air let go. I liked that but it was not a poem,
nor when she got her bulk up over
her small feet, those splayed cloven high-heeled hooves.
Her long hairs were white and black and spare and coarse.
How small her eyes were, how rough her skin.
Her eyes were hidden in the folds of her face, her pale lashes.
And there was no poem in her food in a stainless steel bowl,
just bits of cabbage and carrot and white bread and tomato,
nor in her snuffling selection, her approval in noises.
So there was no poem to be found in the usual places,
nor in the strange ones. It was the day of the pig
and a week before the year of the sheep.