Short Cowshed Poems

Mouthing an oath, she carried on
Milking the cow in cowshed grim.
She only wished she could be gone...
Mouthing an oath, she carried on.
Into the shed sun never shone.
Now milk was spilling over brim!

Mouthing an oath, she carried on
Milking the cow in cowshed grim.





3/24/2023...

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Gravel road winds up to the gate
    logs from a bygone era, sturdy
      electrified now, to keep out ~
        or perhaps to keep in ~

  The cowshed, chicken coop
    scraggly gardens and grapevines
  all still there, the ground still bare
    desert sand, flies around
      but no one dies of thirst... 

  Paint's peeling, metal's rusting
    fragrance carried on the air
  Paradise once for this sixty-year-old-lad
    walking the fields, remembering dad...

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When the night
              rubs out the horizon
              and all this black
              has more this quality of shade

and all the copsed trees
              cluster around sleeping fields
              and buried life waits and looks

a door in a heap of lived-in-stones opens,
              neon turns the cowshed
              into some kind of church.

This is the drained time,
              the false dawn
              that makes the morning man start....

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A well-water pump cranks out its iron-water
    crooked wire remains -- once, sturdy chicken coops
  The brackish, muddy area over there, the cowshed
    some withered trees dot the hills, bereft now of their fruit

  A few young lads herd goats, or perhaps they are living skeletons?
    cows with ribs exposed, horses with manes as limp as rags ...
  Some day they'll come again, the strong, determined youth
    to bale the hay, to turn the rocks over, to plow and seed relentlessly ......

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