The Call

"The church has finally let in the goats,"
I read on a card in a shop in
St. Augustine, not getting it. "You know,"
my friend says, "the sheep and the goats."

It's all right to wear
a flannel dress, to write, to want a child.
"Bring back a baby," my husband jokes
before I take off. A room will fill with toys,

a kid will arrive. When I call, each of us
hears a voice. Each of us nuzzles the phone.

Leslie Shiel teaches poetry and advanced composition at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.