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.
Laura Gilpin
It has been said that poetry is prayer. That may be true. It is an expression of the soul, something that matters. I memorized a poem this week – The Two-Headed Calf, by Laura Gilpin. It is a special poem, with deep personal meaning.
Laura Gilpin was a poet and a nurse and a beautiful human being. She loved words. In 1976 she won the Walt Whitman Award for her first book of poetry – The Hocus-Pocus of the Universe. Gilpin died young. In the summer of 2006, she was diagnosed with a form of incurable brain cancer – glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Ironically, one of the symptoms of GBM is double vision. Like the calf in her famous poem, she could see twice as many stars as the rest of us. Gilpin died six months after being diagnosed, at the age of 56. She had just finished her second poetry collection – The Weight of a Soul.
The Two-Headed Calf is Gilpin’s most celebrated poem. It describes the short, sweet life of a newborn calf suffering from polycephaly, a rare genetic defect. Calves born with two heads, or more often two faces, are usually stillborn. In rare cases they live for a short time, surviving for only a few hours or a few days. Their lives are short and tragic.
The imagery in this poem is striking. The first stanza is cold and speaks of death, describing the calf as a “freak of nature” to be discarded and carried away to a museum for people to stare at.
The second stanza in contrast is warm, drawing the reader into the present where the precious newborn calf is alive “and in the north field with his mother,” gazing at the stars in the summer sky. The calf is unaware that he will no longer be alive in the morning.
Much can be gleaned from this short poem and these few words. It speaks to the precious beauty of life, however short, and living in the moment. It reminds us that we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Many, myself included, who find themselves different, can relate to this poem. We may not fit in or conform well to the world around us. We may look different or be different, just like the two-headed calf. In the end, we are reminded to love ourselves and others as we are, two heads and all. And we are reminded to appreciate the time given to us in life.
I found another one of Gilpin’s poems this week. It is less known, but equally beautiful and moving. It offers us deep truth about love and life and death. The poem is Life After Death, by Laura Gilpin.
These things I know:
How the living go on living
and how the dead go on living with them
so that in a forest
even a dead tree casts a shadow
and the leaves fall one by one
and the branches break in the wind
and the bark peels off slowly
and the trunk cracks
and the rain seeps in through the cracks
and the trunk falls to the ground
and the moss covers it
and in the spring the rabbits find it
and build their nest
inside the dead tree
so that nothing is wasted in nature
