Cow Pleasure – Anthony Weedon

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition
1978 Crabbe Memorial Competition – Joint First Prize
Adjudicators: John Holloway, Joan Foreman

Here is the delicious sound
of a cow cropping fresh grass;
she flicks her tongue round a wadge,
presses up with her teeth, tugs,
and pulls with a satisfied
sucking crunch and swallows fast
into her cavernous depths.

Her firm tread is red heavy
under her dewlap’s quiver,
ponderous and ox-sure like
her ancestors who plodded,
pulling the plough over this
same pasture she now grazes
observing with her cloud eyes.

Her mooing is mellow deep
like old gongs from Tibetan
temples and tranquil like yaks
undeterred by adverse winds.
Her life is tongue grasped lushness
fortifying maternal
feeling in long lactations

ended only by a bolt’s
fast thud. Her pleasures will not
end in pain, decrepitude
and tasteless sheets, but, then, she
cannot ever know the joy
it is to stand here watching
her enjoy the luscious grass.

Copyright © Anthony Weedon 1978