Every once in a while, mindless scrolling on TikTok rewards you with something worth stopping to think about. Earlier today, I stumbled across this video, which shared a poem called “The Two-Headed Calf” by Laura Gilpin.
The poem was originally published in The Hocus-Pocus of the Universe, a book of poems written by Gilpin that was awarded the Walt Whitman Award by the Academy of American Poets. The poem stopped me in my tracks; I was in awe at how it took Gilpin only nine lines to unfold an entire world of emotion, heartbreak, cruelty, wonder, and beauty. Here is the full poem:
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. [1]
As I reviewed Gilpin’s Wikipedia page, I realized that she was 26 or 27 when this poem was published in 1977, the same age that I am now. Though she passed away in 2007, I wonder how she would have reacted knowing that almost 50 years after the poem was written, one singular video about her poem would have 2.4 million views and 400k+ likes, not to mention dozens of people commenting about how they want to get two-headed calf tattoos because of this poem.
The first stanza reminds us of our impending death—some of us will die sooner than others (like the two-headed calf). It also highlights the cruelty of life. The calf—innocent but “freakish”—must be killed and showcased in a museum in order for the farmer to get any value out of it.
But the second stanza reminds us that even though life may be short and cruel, there is so much beauty to see. The calf can see twice as many stars, illustrating that the things that make us different are often the things that make life all the more beautiful.
I decided to do more research to see if I could find other poems that are similar to “The Two-Headed Calf,” and I came across “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop. The full poem can be read here, but it tells a story about catching a fish and—after seeing that the fish had been hooked five times before but escaped each time—deciding to let the fish go.
Both poems use a pure, innocent creature to establish a connection with the natural world. But while the calf shows us how to find beauty in a world that is cruel, the fish tells us how to find beauty in a world that is merciful.
Nature—and life in general—is not fair. But it is ultimately up to us to decide how we extract beauty and meaning from the world.
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Every once in a while, mindless scrolling on TikTok rewards you with something worth stopping to think about. Earlier today, I stumbled across this video, which shared a poem called “The Two-Headed Calf” by Laura Gilpin.
The poem was originally published in The Hocus-Pocus of the Universe, a book of poems written by Gilpin that was awarded the Walt Whitman Award by the Academy of American Poets. The poem stopped me in my tracks; I was in awe at how it took Gilpin only nine lines to unfold an entire world of emotion, heartbreak, cruelty, wonder, and beauty. Here is the full poem:
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. [1]
As I reviewed Gilpin’s Wikipedia page, I realized that she was 26 or 27 when this poem was published in 1977, the same age that I am now. Though she passed away in 2007, I wonder how she would have reacted knowing that almost 50 years after the poem was written, one singular video about her poem would have 2.4 million views and 400k+ likes, not to mention dozens of people commenting about how they want to get two-headed calf tattoos because of this poem.
The first stanza reminds us of our impending death—some of us will die sooner than others (like the two-headed calf). It also highlights the cruelty of life. The calf—innocent but “freakish”—must be killed and showcased in a museum in order for the farmer to get any value out of it.
But the second stanza reminds us that even though life may be short and cruel, there is so much beauty to see. The calf can see twice as many stars, illustrating that the things that make us different are often the things that make life all the more beautiful.
I decided to do more research to see if I could find other poems that are similar to “The Two-Headed Calf,” and I came across “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop. The full poem can be read here, but it tells a story about catching a fish and—after seeing that the fish had been hooked five times before but escaped each time—deciding to let the fish go.
Both poems use a pure, innocent creature to establish a connection with the natural world. But while the calf shows us how to find beauty in a world that is cruel, the fish tells us how to find beauty in a world that is merciful.
Nature—and life in general—is not fair. But it is ultimately up to us to decide how we extract beauty and meaning from the world.
