cow poem by Chris Mansell

it is a day for poetry   that is to say

one like any other   full of sunshine   paddocks

and cold at heart

all day I speak to screen poets

the artless machine gives me breath

and words             and

I am sitting in

a paddock far away    a cow roars out

even I can tell distress from love

in cows

in others it’s not so easy

blue seeps in at the curtains

of my cow-isolated study

I warn it off with words

there is too much at stake

to start loving now

the phone nags

and there only people

I don’t love

they make their demands

time    money    an honest opinion

a dance

I don’t want to hold hands

there is no one whose thigh I want

to cross no particular blizzard eye I want to

capture

I make the print big with fine

resolution

the cow is giving birth

and someone is in trouble     the dairyman

– I know his name –

will come in slow urgent

paces across the paddock

and watch    not wishing

to disturb her   his girl   full of hope in a field

of good winter feed

there is nothing to the print

the page rolls past like a lowing

poets fall off and fail

clipped by time    they thought they were immortal

and not one was

a comet   the size of a swimming pool

glides over and we don’t notice our near extinction

astronomers should take more care we’re not hit

by the unpredictable

again      

she lows in the paddock

and the dairyman­ ­­– Phil – judges with squinty eyes

it’s a matter of economics this love

I write cheques

to poets     petite commercial haikus of trust

it must

be the end of the financial world

the mail drips in

another poem comes reeling up   this is a bluster

of words

high as a blue sky the cow says

and Phil     the master cowman    strides over the field

of the poem    there is food for thought in this green

poet

he takes the cow by the horns

and speaks to her in low tones

then he grasps the calf by the legs and for a while

there is an ten-legged beast    his two   her four

and the four of the new

she bellows out and Phil

pulls the legs and the poems come up on the screen   too much

too many poems    and the new beast is born

I was spoilt for choice once I had decided to choose a poem by Australian poet, Chris Mansell.  I would describe her as one of the more prominent islands in the stormy seas of the Australian poetry scene. She has been there, like, forever. And is a mover and a shaker. A founder of magazines and small presses, an instigator of poetry festivals, a memorable reader, much anthologised etc, and she has written so much good stuff. 

My first thought was 'cow poem' because I took to it straight away when she sent me a copy a while back, and I put it in my mental folder of Special Poems That I Like Very Much, but then she did a reading recently at the Dan O'Connell here in Melbourne, and there was more stuff I liked very much. In particular a poem called 'Parsley' which tickled my fancy with its 'taste of truth'. But no, I went with 'cow poem', just because.

'cow poem' appears in Letters Kardoorair Press 2009  and is published with permission here.

This week's editor is guest poet Jennifer Compton who was born in New Zealand in 1949 and is based in Melbourne. She was the 2008 Randell Cottage Writer in Residence in Wellington, NZ, and was this year's Visiting Literary Artist at Massey University in Palmerston North. She is writing her way through the backlog of good ideas she picked up while she was there. In May 2011 she will be a guest again at Sarajevo Poetry Days. 

Her new book of poetry – 'Barefoot' – was published by Picaro Press this year. You will find one of the Barefoot poems Rongotai and two other Jen Compton poems on Tuesday Poet sites. 

Tuesday Poem congratulates Wellington poet Diana Bridge who is the winner of the 2010 Lauris Edmond Award for Poetry worth $NZ1000.