Natalie Rowe

Oh you flamboyant goat, with your sweat
that smells like upscale cheese, lying there
on your pancaked rock, twisting your noggin
to stare at stars and bite at flies, dappled Daphne
snoozing with your caprine clan, a twitching
clump of affection. You conjure up slow
swaying with Paul Domitrovich, climbing that
Stairway to Heaven, boy-hands pocketed
in my Jordached backside, grade-eight lust
and lonely me, my only ostentation
embroidery on denim, wishing I could pile myself
onto the warm heap of him, afraid to quiver
my oestrous tail, afraid to be that
flamboyant girl. When I was three, a goat
knocked me flat, but up I sprang like
a bop-bag clown, unabashed by those freaky
eyes, the cloven assault, awash as I was
in ignorant courage, tottering back, zombie arms
reaching for more. But by the time the needle eased
into that Led Zeppelin groove,
my bravado had sashayed
off a teenage precipice, smacking into
a diffident gully, landing next to
the skeleton of a careless ibex. But oh
you flamboyant goat, you
and your herd-mates, crashing craniums
to claim place in the pasture, lounging with
alfalfa belly-bulges, sharing
semi-somnolent ruminations, then rising
to scale a mountain of possibilities on impossibly
tiny toes. Oh flamboyant Daphne, I wish I could
scamper alongside you and just for a moment
be queen of the herd,
exuberant.