Beyond the window on the hillside up
between the dark green oaks at dawn,
a patch of blond dry feed – grasses
bent to a breeze before the storm.
Even the empty heads of wild oats
are heavy beneath a gray sky in May
and I can trace the well-coiffed track
of a comb from a quarter mile away –
that seemingly untouched perfection
where forty cows have grazed, that
last arch old grasses reach before a rain
lays them down to mat and mold
where I thought I saw two black cows,
calves somewhere else behind a tree,
two dark shapes that have disappeared
now that I’ve leapt there, focused in detail,
and remembering: we gathered them all,
the last pair trailing-in along the fence
tracking her friends, looking for company
other than her calf ready to be weaned –
slightly wild-eyed, suddenly suspicious
of a change in needs, almost completely
self-sufficient, living off the land,
almost perfect if she were a wild thing.
