In a farming scenario no doubt familiar to him, Arboretum Founder Fred Lape’s poem celebrates the “life force” in nature.
Litter of Pigs
On the first cold fall days the little pigs
Whine and grumble like bees in a hive.
Nestled in hay they bide their time in a pile,
one on top of the other, a living pyramid.
But the topmost pig, three sides to the cold,
is unsatisfied; he squeals and whines and wiggles,
he works and pushes himself down in the pile,
and another unfortunate forced to the top
squeals and whines and wiggles and pushes in turn.
So they lie until somewhere in the pyramid
one bites the ear of another and bites it hard.
The bitten one squeals as if stuck by a knife.
The pile explodes like a dynamite blast.
The little pigs wheel and run in circles,
they grunt, they whine, they sniff each other,
they grow silent.
The furor over, they return.
The first one snuggles down into the hay;
another climbs on top; a fourth one pushes in;
and so the living pyramid builds up again,
and one poor pig unfortunate is left on top
and whines and whines and whines.