Weighing Lambs

You ask how much the mountain
weighs as we watch it from the step of
the cabin. We've been weighing lambs,
their stalk legs poking from a bobbing sling.

You note numbers in a spiral pad, learning
kilos as we go. You're keen to keep one
as a pet, despite the bleating, the black blobs
of excrement you'd never train away.

I like your drive, pure as a lamb’s bleat.
The world weighs six billion trillion metric tons,
I say, as you watch the wind comb the pines.
The mountain’s just a pimple on the surface,

but too big to weigh, or move if that's what’s on
your mind. You note the numbers in your spiral pad,
making calculations with unmastered maths:
only one of us is willing to be wrong.