Goats

In the corner, a pale goat leaps, light as a childhood memory. Above it the mountain still lives in its blood: horns curling like smoke, hooves cracking into lightning, a body stitched from cliff-edge and wind. Goats were among the first to stay. They gave milk, hide and stubborn company, on hillsides ten thousand years ago and on a farm in Waihī. The fence came later. The goat forgot. The painting remembers. Her name was Snowy.