Produced by Dennis Camire

This week’s poem is by Claire Herson of Winthrop.

Fences

By Claire Herson

Beef cattle with eyes as soft as God

watch me from the pasture,

all heads turn as the car door opens,

and I grab grocery bags balanced in each hand

just as I carry their grain buckets for feeding time.

Their indifference stretches across the fields,

A glance like a shrug, separating me

from anything I’ll ever be to them.

The flowers, insects, and swaying grasses

bend between us bowing to something

unseen in the breeze. They sing a song

I’ve mostly ignored about the silent expanse

between the house and barn; a river

I only cross as an outsider. I don’t like to think

of it, their submissiveness I take for granted,

quiet and unexpectant behind the barbed wire.

I expect them to be unexpectant. It helps me

accept that we are all used for something. Some of us

for love, some for food. It’s all in the eyes, whether

we keep looking for that one open place in the fence.

Dennis Camire can be reached at dcamire@cmcc.edu