COWS WHO RUN WITH THE DEER
				    
        "A cow just can't do that!" 

	       - Meg Randa who saw 1400 pound Emily leap a 5-foot gate   
  
Left in the shed as the slaughterhouse workers broke   
for lunches she was probably related to,   
she waited,   
next in line.   
  
Could she smell the blood   
through the swinging doors,   
could she hear the mallets   
or blades, the gurgling, the flash surprise    
before she turned   
and leapt the moon?   
  
And when she beat the workers   
to the forest, how did she elude the huntsmen   
sent to bring back her heart,   
how did she know   
to steer away from the hay set out like gingerbread houses,   
how did she know the wolves' disguises?   
  
Does she appreciate those who taught her   
how the woods differ from the barns and meadows,   
was she admired or   
just some chunky geek deer?   
  
I can go on with these questions,   
but I'm dying to hear her own throat open   
in simple conversation, to fill me   
more than just locals reporting how they saw her   
foraging with the deer,   
times and places.   
  
Last night I dreamt she told me, her voice   
tired and confident,    
  
and there were giants   
and wizards and strange gold birds laughing in the trees,   
there were two-headed wolves, men   
dressed as bulls, a stream running with milk   
which she cried into, heavy elves    
asking riddles about cheese, a thundercloud    
of biting flies inside a deep cave, Hernando   
the buck who fell for her charm and tried to keep her   
(against her will, of course); oh, her story   
churned and spread and ate me up whole,   
  
this four-stomached Homer,   
Virgil, Grimm, Stephen King, this strange realm   
so much more than rural Massachusetts, so much more   
than the living we so systematically plan.