Groundhog by Ellen Bryant Voigt

Groundhog

 

not unlike otters which we love frolicking

floating on their backs like truant boys unwrapping lunch

same sleek brown pelt some overtones of gray and rust

though groundhogs have no swimming hole and lunch

is rooted in the ground beneath short legs small feet

like a fat man’s odd diminutive loafers not

 

frolicking but scurrying layers of fat his coat

gleams as though wet shines chestnut sable darker

head and muzzle lower into the grass

a dark triangular face like the hog-nosed skunk another delicate

nose and not a snout doesn’t it matter what they’re called I like swine

 

which are smart and prefer to be clean using their snouts

to push their excrement to the side of the pen

but they have hairy skin not fur his fur

shimmers and ripples he never uproots the mother plant his teeth

I think are blunt squared off like a sheep’s if cornered does he

cower like sheep or bite like a sow with a litter is he ever

 

attacked he looks to me inedible he shares his acreage

 

with moles voles ravenous crows someone

thought up the names his other name is botched Algonquin

but yes he burrows beneath the barn where once a farmer

 

dried cordwood he scuttles there at speech cough laugh

at lawnmower swollen brook high wind he lifts his head

as Gandhi did small tilt to the side or stands erect

like a prairie dog or a circus dog but dogs don’t waddle like Mao

with a tiny tail he seems asexual like Gandhi like Jesus if Jesus

came back would he be vegetarian also pinko freako homo

 

in Vermont natives scornful of greyhounds from the city

self-appoint themselves woodchucks unkempt hairy macho

who would shoot on sight an actual fatso shy mild marmot radiant

as the hog-nosed skunk in the squirrel trap both cleaner than sheep

fur fluffy like a girl’s maybe he is a she it matters

what we’re called words shape the thought don’t say

rodent and ruin everything