Of Goats and Goethe

All night we mingled flesh
and stories.
We barely dozed
before the morning sun
slipped in the room.
She slid across my belly,
took me in half hard,
then lay her head upon my chest.

I teased her and she pouted.
“You’re trying to get my goat again.”
“Surely, I’ve got them all by now.”
She giggled and the jiggle
of her loins
ran laughing up my spine.
I vowed,
“I’ll be your lover and your gottherd.”
“Gottherd?”
“A man who tends to goats.”
“There’s no such word.”
“Of course there is,
like shepherd but with goats.”
“I’ve never heard it.”
“It’s not surprising.
Goats are out of fashion.”
“You made it up.”
“Never. It’s from the German.”
“But Gott in German is god not goat”
“Exactly, Goethe wrote a poem
playing on the thought of god or goat.”
“I’ve never read that poem.”
“Never been translated.
A play on words
with different words
is rarely quite so funny.”

And though the answer
lay five steps across the room
in Webster’s dictionary,
the floor was cold
and we were wrapped,
each in the other’s skin,
passing time from dawn ‘til noon
spinning goats and gods and Goethe.