DISTANCES
  
Where I grew up, if a cow's in the road   
we'd call that an accident   
and I just mean that in the non dent-and-innard-splashing sense.   
It's not us with cow catcher crews   
quoted in New York and Los Angeles papers saying   
"The cow is quick.   
The cow is intelligent.   
The cow has learned to recognize our truck"   
so that redneck New Yorkers and Angelinos can yuck it up   
with Aw-Shucks guffaws at them backwoods Midwesterners.   
  
As is, we Midwesterners, plains-dwellers   
I might add, can hardly believe a place like Delhi,   
where cows stand like lords   
of the medians, traffic an inch off their haunches;   
ox-carts, bikes, cars, camels, trucks, elephants, rickshaws bellowing   
and swerving through random patterns and the cow   
chews;   
and we wouldn't naturally know that sweet-smokey smell there   
comes off dung-fires; nothing here   
like gosadans, homeless cow shelters;   
we don't even have special names for a homeless cow shelter, homeless cow,   
just barns,   
just fences,   
  
just cursing men in jeans and dark ballcaps   
busting their asses to get that cow   
away from where cars rocket around dilated nostrils   
which can't understand the smell of speed,   
registering like colors   
our eyes have never seen,   
like spaceship encounters when we're pretty sure   
we ain't asleep, square facts cramming   
into round brain-holes.   
  
Who are we   
to define distanced   
identity;   
  
who   
are you?