Little Goat

• Last night, driving home from rehearsal,
• tender from singing Bach, Bleib Bei Uns,
• “Stay with Us, for the Evening is Coming
• and the Day Draws to an End,”
• turning into Oak Street, I saw in the road
• a very young goat.
• I slowed to a stop, and flashed my brights
• to the driver of an oncoming car.
• She stopped. Then there were three of us
• unsure of what to do.
• The goat started to bleat.
• The driver remembered that someone
• south on Van Deusenville Road
• had sometimes kept goats
• and left to talk with him.
• I turned off the car and got out,
• but the goat disappeared into the bushes
• and probably followed their darkness up the hill.
• I called to her,
• Hey, little goat, I said. Come here.
• Come here, we’ll find your home.
• After a few minutes, I drove to mine.
• Winter is Coming.
• From my bed I hear squirrels in the attic.
• I cannot welcome them.

Susan Hartung was a painter and poet who lived much of her life in western Massachusetts and whose paintings have been exhibited widely in New York and Massachusetts. Her collection of poems, Inclusion, was published by Elephant Tree House in 2011 (elephanttreehouse.com). Her poems have appeared in The Berkshire Review, A Memory of New Hunger, Serving House Journal, and in Cell2Soul. They have also been printed as posters for traveling exhibitions organized by Healing Legacy in Brattleboro, Vermont. She was an accomplished singer who for many years was a member of Berkshire Bach, a choral group in Massachusetts. A retrospective exhibit of her paintings, drawings, and prints took place at the Teaching Gallery at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, New York, last month. Susan Hartung lived with breast cancer for many years and ultimately died from that disease last month, on September 6.