Profession For a Day

The day I am expecting I am
woken before clocks as pre-electric
night is torn by gloaming;
[ the vogue-tug
of distant commuting
for an easily-bought
cereal of trafficking
unravels before this dawn].

For a prior appointment calls.

The lowing of cows knows my name.

To go down old cobbles
with a lamp-lit bucket of warm water.
To sit a three legged blackwood stool
turning my cheek to cow flanks
and wash the mud from milk-heavy
Dandelion or Glee’s udder, then to grasp
far and near teats in two ungloved hands,
and capillary pump a warm load of this
heavy animal bond with humanity
into release for her ...

This most important meeting will begin
my professional day with an edge drawn
of grass in that froth making sound
heard long before capuccino machines…

Afterwards, in new light, I’ll milk-lip
a bowl full for Gilp, the tabby mouser,
then pour the bucket of udder-water
into pans to cool for settling and knead
a nob of rennet in while the milk’s warm
releasing spore to go to work at culture

Then I’ll kick grass down to were Kaiser,
the blazed Chestnut half-draught,
hangs his great head over rubbed beams
on a cast cyclone gate as he idly kicks
the massive red-gum gatepost, yearning
for the husbandman to put attention
in careful rein with chaff and task on him.

I’ll run my fingers through his temples
like the otherness of being in need of human
touch and something will grow as religious
as true feeling, like a return to innocence…

I will then be committing the long-lost
prodigality of belief.


New Year 2005 © Wayne David Knoll