My Grandfather's Goat

He, too, had a goat, I recall, who ate
cigarettes and dropped pellets before the
cart in which the younger children rode two at
a time, and whom I remember visit-
ing in a field behind a deserted
radio station, its dead tower black
against the sunset. The weeds were high and
the goat's knees were bad. I never really
understood how the goat came not to live
with them--just the vague ideas that children
gather from listening to adults talk--
but one day he was gone, moved from the yard
to the edge of town to roam in the shadow
of the squat pink building and the dead transmitter.

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