Some Poems from Old Froggo's Book of Practical Cows

 
     Ghazal For Matilda

          ...at the Shafter Ranch, a fault crevice was 
          momentarily so wide as to admit a cow which fell in
          head first and was thus entombed.  The closure which
          immediately followed left only the tail visible.
               --G.K. Gilbert, Report of State Earthquake
                 Investigation Commission, 1908

The ground sprouts cows
that grow like albino asparagus.

Life: some cows leap moons, burn down cities,
some awkwardly fill cow-shaped crevices in the ground.

Bones ground by sandstone and serpentine grind North, maybe 
     scraping
you toward Alaska, two inches closer each April.

Ground beef?
I'd never use such a pun.

How does this affect my theology: to know my God is a mighty God
who wears black, tips cows at 5am.

Gaia, you shameless omnivore:
hamburger for breakfast?

With my feet braced on the moon, I could grasp that tail and 
     swing
the earth around my head like a blue balloon.

Matilda, nose to grinding stone,
it wouldn't matter if you had a hundred stomachs and golden 
     udders.

"Moo?"
"Moo!"

A dog pulled that tail, his own wagging like a one-winged 
     hummingbird's one wing.
Dreaming of endless dinner, he only snapped off a leathery snack.

Matilda, in that split-
second of waking and tumbling, how Agnostic were you?

Standing on your nose, breathing stones,
do you, cow, do you at last look interested in what surrounds 
     you?



     Ode to Omaha

I won't say I wish the air
would smell like cow shit again,
but I have to admit
something in me misses it a little.

It's only masochism to the extent of nostalgia
as I'm an Omaha native
and before I could drive or work a minimum wage pizza job
I knew what a hot summer day smelled like,

humid and sharp
across tennis courts and backyard hide and seek games,
not choking yet definitely rank
when the winds stirred the stockyards like thick soup,

those truckloads of scorching cows
at 30th and Q, more cows
than anyone but an accountant could count,
mooing and sticking to the air.

And the air itself became an abstraction
reminding Omaha about function, industry.
You can't walk through Silicon Valley and smell computer chips,
along Wall Street you can't catch a strong whiff of stocks.

But the cows don't come to Omaha now.
Steaks around town taste fine,
though the wooden pens are empty like an old movie set;
the cows stop somewhere else, letting Omaha smell

like Denver, Saint Louis, or Seattle,
generic USDA prime city air out there:
traffic, river, power plants,
train station, bakeries, dumpsters, mown grass, sweat.

It was never "Hog butcher to the world,"
not in reputation at least, but
dreams fill out big here,
blooming and bursting;

it's a city we move away from to Make It Big
and return to when that's not enough,
a few blips along I-80 without pine forest or mountains,
no Disneyland, Graceland, canyon, or Rushmore; it is basic,

it is simple, and from here the world still looks amazing,
a spectacle, carnival, magical frontier to touch and smell
and still feel content
to return home from.

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