Bush, Rachael

Pig Hunting

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