Produced by Dennis Camire
This week’s poem is by Claire Herson of Winthrop.
Fences
By Claire Herson
Beef cattle with eyes as soft as God
watch me from the pasture,
all heads turn as the car door opens,
and I grab grocery bags balanced in each hand
just as I carry their grain buckets for feeding time.
Their indifference stretches across the fields,
A glance like a shrug, separating me
from anything I’ll ever be to them.
The flowers, insects, and swaying grasses
bend between us bowing to something
unseen in the breeze. They sing a song
I’ve mostly ignored about the silent expanse
between the house and barn; a river
I only cross as an outsider. I don’t like to think
of it, their submissiveness I take for granted,
quiet and unexpectant behind the barbed wire.
I expect them to be unexpectant. It helps me
accept that we are all used for something. Some of us
for love, some for food. It’s all in the eyes, whether
we keep looking for that one open place in the fence.
Dennis Camire can be reached at dcamire@cmcc.edu
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