August 2020
Bio Note: I appreciate Verse-Virtual for giving me a place to share poems
from my books which never appeared in journals. So here’s one of them, from More (C&R Press, 2010).
Cows are all around where I live, in rural Pennsylvania, but I actually wrote this one in Virginia,
during a stay at an artist colony (The VCCA). Who knows when or if it will ever be safe to return
to a colony again, but it was heaven while it lasted. My “regular job” has been as caregiver for
my son, who has autism, so this was a lovely escape every couple of years.
Holsteins
I’m walking down a gravel road
past cows in the green fields,
whose teeth make a kind of music
slowly chewing their way across the meadow.
The black one with the white face reminds me
of a girl from school, the way she rounded
her shoulders trying to hide her bulk
as she shoveled in lunch, the way she looked
middle-aged at fourteen, chins gleaming
as if she’d been grazing on buttercups,
her cardigans, flowered dresses, sensible shoes.
But I saw her at the last reunion, and she’d lost
the weight, stepped out of that old life
and into another. Anything can happen.
A cow can grow wings, become an American
Redstart, flit black-and-white from tree
to tree. A woman can lean on a rusty fence
and get tired of wishing things would change.
But I don’t want to change a thing. I want
to keep walking this stony path, listening
to dried leaves in the beech tree,
insects playing their strings in the grass.
I want the sun to run down my face like honey.
I want the wind to kiss me. I want all this to last.
©2020 Barbara Crooker
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