While I was away attending the National Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia in July 2013 with my teenage sons, my wife and younger children brought home two little precocious pygmy goats.  They named the black-and-white kid Olive, and the light-brown kid Cupcake.  Oh, they were adorable, running and jumping and calling to their human friends non-stop.  They loved the attention of being petted and bottle-fed, and followed Hyrum and Hannah around everywhere.  “My babies,” Angie called them.  This poem is about her love for the new kids.

CUPCAKE AND OLIVE

Olive is a pygmy goat,
white with black splotches,
or black with white,
two months old, almost.
You brought her, two days old,
home, with little cousin Cupcake,
and bottle fed her
four times a day.
She doesn’t bleat like Cupcake
(oh, my goodness),
even when hungry,
but cocks her head to one side,
just so, as if to say,
And where, Mama, have you been?
Olive will only suck
from a bottle held by you,
having jumped and flopped
onto your mother’s lap.
You stroke her neck
with a free hand.