In one of
my many
lifetimes, when
I was a child,
my dad had a
sprawling stretch
of land in
Missouri.
He had 200
head of cattle.
We used to run
the cows we
bought at auction
through this
shoot with wooden
beams that closed
on their necks.
My stepmom took
this gun-like object
and put an orange
tag in their ear.

My brother and I used
to play with this black and
white steer.
We called him old #56
because of the number on
his tag.
We chased him, and then he
chased us.
I felt bad for
him, the tag in
his ear.
I talked to my
dad about it.
He said if the steer
ever got lost,
we could find him.
I felt good about that.
I didn't want to lose him.

One night
the following summer,
we were sitting down for
dinner.
I hadn't seen
old #56 for a while.
I asked Dad where
he was.
He didn't say anything.
We were having
t-bone steaks.

As I write this,
my black and white
kitten, Bukowski,
bites at the pen and
tries to wrestle my
wrist as it moves across
the paper.
I'm glad that he
isn't a steer.

The cow looks beyond,

maybe at the evening light --


mirrored in her eye.

I suspect a cow

in the meadow at night, there --


the black spots that move.

Like a precious stone

in the landscape of her skin:


the eye of the cow.

How to slice you chickens? asked the cow.
My hooves can't hold the knife...
******* all their fun or their sorrows?
My blade won't fit my grip...
These hooves, useless to our need!
You turned me into a sloppy cow!

I fatten the cow
And drink her milk
To wash down
Her baby's flesh
And she loves me even now
As I squeeze her *******
Her milk allows
It feels like silk
Because I fattened the cow
To drink her milk

Cows graze in the grass
Caterpillars eat leaves
Humans ate the whole world
Turning God’s oasis into a feast

From a distant village, where forest lining the edges, where nature dancing with wild rhythms, where human existence have usual conflicts with minacious wild life, I bought an unparagoned cow.
superbious gait
she glimmered in bright spotlight -
wild domestic breed

In that romantic night, where moon shy to pop out from behind the murky clouds, the queen in the cowshed spend her first night with the howling songs of dogs.
croaking frog's sonnets
blended with loud fearful barks -
greeted the new guest

As the symphony of greetings continued the night and the night after, I was puzzled and forced to look around to meet a vacant sky and under it the haunting darkness.
predawn darkness stood
a veil to my eyes hiding
mysteries of night

Unable to squirrel the burden of anxieties of my quizzical mind, I decided to stay awake to watch the cowshed and my cow under a splendid moonlit night.
mask of truth divulge
laurels stirred in fiery force -
a fine leopard leaped

My abstentious legs dragged back the fleeing heart, and I was rooted trembling as a pole left alone in a cyclone eye.
watchful twinkling eyes
stem the course to silent cow -
fearless mother licked

Astonished to saw the nonchalant cow, licking the beast same her calf, I decided to rend the skies for the jewels of truth behind this precious spectacle of love.
beast lost his wildness
under legs of licking cow -
Leopard lied there low

I took an assiduous journey back to her previous owner with the imagery of a leopard cherished by their benign cow, where I was welcomed by the most baffling story of motherhood.
the truth rushed at last
shivered reminiscence –
fed curious mind

Once a female Leopard lost her way to the erf of human dominance and suffered a pitiful end in their retiform, but before she touched the sacred stream of serenity, a baby was born to the hands of her pursuer.
crying cub was fetched
from dying womb to the barn -
cow turned loving mam

Until the baby Leopard transformed to riotous youth, the halcyon mother cow fed him directly from his teats of love and then one day he was transferred to a faraway forest as an avowal of the law of land.
objections obliged
mother and her son parted -
but distance was dim

Hither to, on every darkest hours of silent nights, the different son visited her foster mother to share his adventures in the distant wild and to cherish the beauty of motherly love and it continues even the mother was transported to another house as the uncouth son followed her to her new abode.
trembled with pleasure
flower of truth opened soft -
fine fragrance of love

The cows look at me

as if they ask me: are you –


living without grass?