The Least of These

The Least of These

The song begins and the eyes are lifted

but the sickle points to the ground

                                                David Whyte

                                                The Song of the Lark

While I slept, the cow, two dozen paces

away and under the slanting roof

of the old two stall barn, stood close

as her nose could get to the old cold hay

and pulled what was left of summer sun

and rain into her mouth and shifted the gait

of her lower jaw, the hump of her 

tongue and suffered

everything of the day that I could

never know.  Her breath was low

and sweet, it was a breeze in the three

o’clock morning, and soon she’d make

her great steam of pee and her three

or four clods, clods she’d made and made

and made all the while chewing

and gazing and mooing from beneath the universe

of her tusk-like white skull

hidden in her great brain:  all that was

between her brown sugar eyes all that was

swelling between her back legs…

While I slept, the cow, two dozen paces

away, made me her milk, she made me

that warm and raw milk, what I’d pull, in an hour

or two, out of her and that, I’d learned

later, much later, was the least of it.