Calhouns Can(n)ons

And Now For Something Completely Different

Alas, some folks reading and/or posting on this site seem to think the title of this blog is All Sewer All The Time. It isn’t. So, let’s take a break from all the name calling and neener-neening and poo-throwing at one another. It’s a beautiful summer’s day. Here’s a poem by Billy Collins from a wonderful collection of his poems, Sailing Alone Around the Room (available in paperback). Collins is a wonderfully “accessible” poet who nonetheless hides dangerously beautiful hooks in his poems. And for sheer wordsmithing, he’s a delight. Enjoy.

Afternoon with Irish Cows

There were a few dozen who
occupied the field
across the road from where we
lived,
stepping all day from tuft to tuft,
their big heads down in the soft
grass,
though I would sometimes pass a
window
and look out to see the field
suddenly empty
as if they had taken wing, flown
off to another country.

Then later, I would open the blue
front door,
and again the field would be full
of their munching,
or they would be lying down
on the black-and-white maps of
their sides,
facing in all directions, waiting
for rain.
How mysterious, how patient and
dumbfounded
they appeared in the long quiet of
the afternoon

But every once in a while, one of
them
would let out a sound so
phenomenal
that I would put down the paper
or the knife I was cutting an apple
with
and walk across the road to the
stone wall
to see which one of them was
being torched
or pierced through the side with a long spear.

Yes, it sounded like pain until I
could see
the noisy one, anchored there on
all fours,
her neck outstretched, her
bellowing head
laboring upward as she gave
voice
to the rising, full-bodied cry
that began in the darkness of her
belly
and echoed up through her
bowed ribs into her
gaping mouth.

Then I knew that she was only
announcing
the large, unadulterated cowness
of herself,
pouring out the ancient apologia
of her kind
to all the green fields and the gray
clouds,
to the limestone hills and the inlet
of the blue bay,
while she regarded my head and
shoulders
above the wall with one wild,
shocking eye.