HOLY COWS

        "The birth of a red heifer in Israel is being hailed by religious Jews as a sign
	       from God that work can soon begin on building the 3rd Temple in Jerusalem.
        A team of rabbinical experts last week confirmed that the animal...meets the 
	       correct Biblical criteria for a genuine holy cow.  According to the Book of 
	       Numbers (XIX:2-7), the animal is needed for an ancient Jewish purification 
        ritual."

	       - The Mid-East Dispatch, Daily News From Israel Issue 237, 16 March 1997
  
They say a newborn cow    
may wash the Holy Land    
in blood, a red cow,    
the first perfect red cow    
born in Israel since the Romans burned a Temple there    
one thousand nine hundred and thirty or so years ago.     
One red cow and everyone's tense.     
  
But can you blame them?  Bad things happen    
when cows and gods mingle in the same chapters.     
  
I remember reading The Odyssey in high school,    
and who's most dangerous?  Scylla?  Charybdis?  The cyclops?   
Cows.     
The cyclops ate a few people,    
the rock and the hard place sure were scary,    
but even the sirens and the suitors at the end    
were a grade school birthday party    
compared to those cows.     
  
Just look at it in terms of livestock:    
sheep rescued the crew    
from the cyclops' cave; Circe turned the crew    
into pigs, but they came out    
no worse for the wear; it wasn't until cows    
trotted into the story that things really turned bloody,    
that the body count    
spun like in a modern action-movie, leaving Odysseus    
alone and clinging to a snapped mast as his entire crew,   
every last warrior, was chewed to bits by the sea.     
  
They'd gotten too hungry    
and ate the Sun's cows, and then    
the gods served up some heck:    
steaks that mooed and moved    
off the plates, burgers growling on the grill,    
herds of jerky with attitude, new definitions    
for "lactose intolerance."     
  
And now the paper says a cow's come to Israel,   
and can this red cow   
be red enough for this?    
Some call her a sign from God,    
some call her trouble,    
a call for the devout    
to build a new Temple on contested holy land, to wash holy hands   
with water and this cow's blood,    
to stampede some war, to grind some lives,   
cowbells clanking in the desert, waiting to move.