Fetching Cows

 Sir John Alfred Arnesby Brown, "Full Summer, Ludham, Norfolk"

Fetching Cows

The black one, last as usual swings her head

And coils a black tongue round a grass-tuft. I

Watch her soft weight come down, her split feet spread.

In front, the others swing and slouch; they roll

Their great Greek eyes and breathe out milky gusts

From muzzles black and shiny as wet coal.

The collie trots, bored, at my heels, then plops

Into the ditch. The sea makes a tired sound

That's always stopping though it never stops.

A haycart squats prickeared agains the sky.

Hay breath and milk breath. Far out in the West

The wrecked sun founders though its colours fly.

The collie's bored. There's noting to control . . .

The black cow is two native carriers

Bringing its belly home, slung from a pole.

Norman McCaig

 

Some poems take you away for a moment, whisk you off to a different time or place. It’s like a holiday for the mind, a chance to escape your surroundings and be, well, anywhere else. That’s the magic of this poem.