The Two-Headed Calf

Back when I didn't share an office this poem hung on my door.

Most people didn't notice it; a few read it and didn't even try to understand it. But a hopeful minority of visitors read it and smiled the same pained, but tickled smile that I always feel creep across my face when I read it.

The Two-Headed Calf by Laura Gilpin

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.