Oh cow of love you have me pinned
to your evergreen felt
and are in at my ear with fermenting
oaths and actual importuning
and imprecations. I rebut you
with a tough raft of arguments, derived
from magazines under the sofa
at my Aunt Libbie’s house
I have a disease, your rump is small,
your rich cream disgusts me
and others which are more
sophisticated, from the Bible and books of
philosophy. You give me a soft brown
stare. How I wobble now before you, cow
of love, humongous, like a free-range
sack of boulders swaying
delightfully, your cordial spine
rippling, your celtic skeleton
offering promise. To eat you
would be divine, surely,
your emerald milk fast-forwarding
to your stomachs, pressed over and over
by clenching muscles. Why is it you cows get
such bad press? I wonder, half-beguiled.
Sometimes I see you, fenced,
defending young (‘let go of your dog
if cows surround you’, the notice
on the farm-gate says)
or at the abattoir, steaming hot
and hung prosaically on hooks.
Or on the plate with no relief
except for some mocking green
salad – staked out, defenceless.
They say your flesh can stay
unsullied in the gut
for six months or more –
bowels fill with longing
for sloping fields, a faraway sea.