CowDusty multitudes wander the grassless fields
along I-40 nine-hundred miles from here.
Dazed in the heat, on radioactive feed,
they go from birth to enormous in a few months time.
As far as the eye can see, heads
dip and rise, dip and rise, dip and rise.
You will not make the cow a metaphor.
The impassive anvil is enough.
Cows bawling and pushed into metal stalls
by burly men at their hindquarters is enough:
the hammer slammed, her flat head,
the whites of her eyes, then red.
SpiderTo the poet with goddamn webbing in her eyelashes,
arm-hair, and teeth, because she was smiling
to herself opening the iron gate—a secret
in the boxwoods—onto the pond, marbled green
with algae, to look for goldfish:Your bulldozers haul the sun up every morning.
Your touch, the baptism of concrete.
You fill the spaces between what you build
with speed and bodies. Leave us
some air to work with.CowWe were something slow happening inside the cold brain of a cow . the remote, massive unvindictive indifference of God all-mighty or fate or me.”??????????? You will not write about the cow.
You will not write: Her thick-slippery
tongue, whitish pink, slaps at her buggy
sides and sticky udder. You wont put the cow
on a pedestal, an inconvenience in her bowing
to sweet clover, up and down, up and down.In her solid gaze, best called bovine,
blackflies swim in the liquid periphery,
and there you are, barely in focus, there
you go again—a soft shifty blur.
She says, here its all the same.
She says, our many stomachs are unperturbed.She must, like us, haul herself
through space and time, one field
to another, but youve never seen it.
A low cloud passes over onion,
goldenrod, fools corn, carrot grass:
her shadow through nighttimeto the next mornings tableau:
constant hunger, patient fulfillment,
milling about with the others, chewing.PigeonDescription is not the point.
After dinner we watched the pigeons fly.
Too top-heavy and round to surf the licks of wind
brought in by another hurricane nine-hundred miles away,
they dive, weave, dip, weave, dive.
A banner unloosed, the flock
circles closer and closer in to the silo;
a few artful passes and they settle
for the night on its ledges and broken shingles.
As if that werent enough to bring on darkness,
a single bird rises out of the coda:
dive, weave, dip, weave, dive, an homage.
Description is not the point.
Alone in broad arcs over pasture and dairy barn,
this fowl among fowl draws the radiance of his circling out
as far as intuition allows
and with slow steady flapping
reels it back in. The wind
is more unruly than he remembered.
He misses warm shadows in his periphery:
without them the sky is huge, like new happiness—
already faltering in a few dizzy seconds.
So he, a rock dove of the Columbidae family,
an easy mark, folds himself,
seems to float, and, like a fan
in the hands of a pastors wife, opens
his wings, paddles the air,
and lowers himself
into the silo to roost.GravityYour spidery fingers look for a wrinkle, a wound, a wraith
of gravity in the barest indentation.Hawk-high, the coolness off the rock
comes in waves, a mineral taste.Stack your strength like vertebrae
and balance your flight to the pull of the highway.Be still for the rock
but for gravity, fluctuate your selveslike mercury into and out of
contiguous peninsulas of the bodyto meet rock and earth sufficiently.
Read slowly with hands, fingers, toes,hipbones, knees, shoulders, chin
the lapidary phrasing of antagonist and helpmeet.To the sky, Eleanor,
say, belay, belay, belay.DewlapGuess how old I am.
Eyes, teeth, holes, shadow and luster,
skin pulled across small bones and muscle,
her face hurts her feelings. Loosening,
lined, spotted with mold,
the skin goes wild. Nature is time:
the Big Bang, the Do-DododoBirdbird, and her.
How do you stay so young?
One lady says, Cuban women use egg whites
and alum to pull up drooping eyelids.
Marlene Dietrich pinned back her scalp
before each scene. Three women died
this summer on Dr. Bakers table. Quietly
another says, I dont recognize myself anymore.
Mothers dead giveaways
youve reached a certain age: the walk,
the neck, the crepey skin between the breasts,
and talking about face lifts at dinner.CowA tarp and poles pushing out at the hips,
a tent saddled with rain, shes not so much
cow anymore; whats left hangs low
off her spine like a purse, pulls her toward
the soft ground. Leaving her behind, her skin
cant help but shine like leather in the sun.GroundhogEleanor said Astonish,
and the wind-slapped trees
brought their many hands to the sky,
then corrected themselves,
(nothing had happened)
fidgeting with the air, patting it down
into stillness again.One spruce tossed
and roiled and popped and knew
what was coming but not when.
The tree was a conductors hand
drawing out the storms first tentative notes.
The air like steam from tea.
And still it did not come.Second earth or second sky,
the fog stretched out in the pasture.
Thousands of funnel webs
as far as the eye could see
spun overnight and gemmed with dew.
Rolls of hay rotted in high wide grass.
Ayda-Lie, Ayda-Lie, Ayda-Lie.A tendril of kudzu processes to Amherst
across the railroad bridge.
Are those bee houses or tombstones
between the hills?
She said Astonish. I wished
she were mine.
A groundhog on the railroad tracks.Could it be the same groundhog
at the same juncture of rail and tie
Id seen the day before as I
hurtled across the bridge
through curtains of warm rain?
Its the same posture of concern:
upright in the blue midday,spiky head held in its paws.
The moment had folded over on itself.
We were meant to meet
in this manner and then
we were reminded of it.
Despite all the fuss.
Despite all the fuss.EleanorThe petite bull has gotten out of the pasture.
He scrapes the ground
and dust puffs out of his nostrils.All day goldfinches fall up and down,
thistle to hemlock to thistle,
their sides turn green in later light.The formidable bullfrog has sides like a bellows.
Spiders drag around sacs of eggs while they work.
The big-eared cat kills black crickets who cant keep quiet.Momma, momma?
Eleanor, its time to go.Sometimes my body is my better self.
Year after year it patiently ministers.
Half the time Im not even tryingnot to take this body for granted,
not to take this body down with me.
I wish I could offer it up, let it be taken overby more than it can contain. Eleanor,
I might be gone when you come back.
You might come back when I am gone.There are too many ways to miss a life.
Eleanor, where are you,
its time to go.
Notes
Third section, Cow: Epigraph from Robert Penn Warrens All The Kings Men.