Goat Pen, After Rain by Eliza Dunn

When the rain stops here at this little camp by the lake
we decide to visit the goats—my campers and me.
They are eight years old and still growing into their bright
rubber rainboots, lurching and giggling around me.
It is early August—sky still flat with clouds.
Trees a brilliant green. We walk the wooded path
to the goats, my campers playing a rhyming game:
tree-me, goat-coat, green-bean. What is this called?
one asks, holding up a leaf as big as her face, and this?
pointing to a bright spray of goldenrod. Together,
we try to name everything around us, our voices flying out into green.
When we reach the goats, my campers press up close
to the fence, pony-tailed heads bobbing around me.
They call out to the animals, who emerge damp-coated and curious
from their covering and poke their wet noses through the wire.
You can talk to them, I tell them. Try it. Maybe they’ll talk back.
They’re quiet for a moment, thinking, before bursting into sound.
Hi goats, they say. Do you like the rain? one asks.
I do! I love the rain because it makes us stay inside,
all together. Do you know how to swim? I’m learning.
If I had a dandelion to pick right now I’d wish for you to turn into girls like us.
I miss my mom. Do you have a mom? I wish we could let you free
into a big meadow that goes on forever and ever. They wait, hushed and breathless—
silence, wind, water falling from the sky. Then from one goat,
a loud, mournful bleat. What did he say back? I ask my campers.
They roll their eyes. We don’t know, we don’t speak goat.
I want to tell them no, listen again. I want them to hear it—
the world speaking back to them, really! So I gather them in close
and ask them to close their eyes and I tell them what I hear: the water moving
in the puddles. The goats shifting in their muddy enclosure. Now you try.
Rain, one says. Rain, rain, rain. Someone’s laughing, another says.
somewhere far away but I can still hear them.
The goats are telling us something, one says. I think they miss their mom too.
It’s raining again but we stay for a moment, eyes still closed.
This green music and us, learning again how to listen.