I inhale deeply. Cigarette,
bad air, taste of damp earth
spinning in a picture too big to see.
Against one another,
the young bulls rub like teen-age
boys built for work, flexing
between play and combat,
clods of first-rain mud
dried upon their foreheads,
they sway like one beast
plodding towards hay,
from habit more than hunger.
In two weeks, bellows
will fill the canyon, the world
will change from maternal peace
to untamed cacophony,
primal roars and screams
piercing our pastoral quietude
for another calf, another day—
one more season of grass
to inhale deeply.
drycrikjournal 