Summer poem – of calves, community and being an outsider, an incomer….
Posted: July 12, 2014 Filed under: Poem | Tags: calves, community, cows, Dinas Head, farmers, flowers, immigration, jetstreams, Pembrokeshire, Summer poem, summertime 2 Comments“All things must pass. Mankind is as grass.”
Summer poem
Two calves adventured, maybe misdirected
or spooked? Perhaps, a dog?
dived into the grassy basket of Matilda’s field,
bovine misadventure,
not equine, resurrected.
In the morning,
a delicious day, already sun baked by nine
June, “in like a lion”,
jet steams, cats cradled patterns
streaked the blue backed, split of sunshine,
and I found one calf
nestled into a bower of bracken
nettled and serenaded by the marshmallow pink and white
of baby breathed hawthorn,
bordered by buttercups.
There it stayed, the whole lazy summer’s day,
nervous, ill at ease
unwilling to gambol or feed
unwilling to make hay.
Three farmers came
cattle calling
as the evening slipped away.
Stealthy summer sunset.
Dinas Head diminished,
shadowed
lost horizons
a fishing boat scarred by light
a duskling starshine
in the breathless bay.
“They’ve only been out a day or two,
everything a new sensation,
even the sunlight is new.
Don’t know grass
Nor bonded as a group.
They simply don’t understand
what it is
they’re meant to do.”
We herded the two runaways out of the gate
leading them lane wards
as opposed to astray
through the greened canopy
outfoxed by foxgloves
the elders floated subdued, ethereal amongst the elderflower
motes, particles, as we passed
behind Bryneithen
and into the railway sided field.
The man I walked alongside of
spoke wistfully
of those, “our friends” likewise lost,
of the ties of this small community
the roped weight of history.
And a hint, a nod perhaps,
towards the incoming stream
a Westwards eddy,
and suggested, maybe implied
the consequential claim:
fragmentation, discord, disunity.
In T shirt, shorts and wellies
no farmer, I,
we talked on, joked a little,
a slither of gossip, happenstance,
and yet, a sense, a fractioned hint
of difference
akin somehow, to distance.
Discontent with
the immigrant?
The calves were happy though.
For now,
“Let them eat cake”.
And then
Dusk dropped the lid
and we parted.
“Perhaps you’ll write a poem”
they ribbed.
And so,
I did.
Marc Mordey 12 7 14