Poem Found

July 28, 2007

baa FINDING POEM Part 12

Friday, thirty-one hours after Poem was lost she was found, alive and well, where she was lost. Unknowingly I fenced her in with the rams; the orchard grass was waist high and it hid the rams too.

That afternoon Clara called and said that when she and the boys were up on the hill fixing fence they heard a dog barking in the grass by the ram paddock. But when she went down there, she heard nothing; nevertheless she thought she should mention it to me.

I was 80 miles away pulling into to the slaughterhouse in LaPlume Pennsylvania. I called Dominique and asked her to go to the farm and walk the ram paddock looking at every square foot of it. Dominique said she would call me from the farm after she’d searched.

The slaughterhouse was behind because the Fourth of July had fallen on Wednesday, their killing day. Mr. Darling said my sausage wouldn’t be ready for a couple of hours. I hadn’t slept well and with a market day in the morning I thought I should find a quiet place off the road and close my eyes for an hour. I remembered a grassy parking area that gave onto a small field that was mowed like a golf course on the road into LaPlume. The small sign in the lot said the field was for flying radio controlled model airplanes “only.” The afternoon was dark, there was thunder and lightening. No one would be flying today, the little airport was mine.

I kicked off my boots, cracked the window, bunched up a red hoodie for a pillow and lay my head down on it. I closed my eyes and thought of what I’d done and what I could do from here. Yesterday and again this morning I went back to the ram paddock and called her but got no response. If she were in there with the rams they would have been spooky or she would have driven them through the fence by now—but they grazed peacefully—I fell asleep thinking of Poem’s cold wet nose.

My classic, old phone ring tone awakened me; it was Dominique, “I found Poem.” “Oh, what good news…” “Her leash was wound around two tufts of grass and she couldn’t move.” “So that’s why the rams were undisturbed.” “She was happy to see me, wagging her tail” “Great news, thanks; I should be at the farm in a couple of hours.”

I drove back to the slaughterhouse, picked up the lamb, took 81 South to Scranton then got on 84 East to New York. It was a new day. When I pulled into the farm I could see her in the kennel. She had been out in the overnight rain and she was as black and as sleek and as clean as a new Porsche.