Elizabeth Jacobson: The Cows

Now that I have read this story about the cows

I think of them at night when I cannot sleep,

how they are so still in their grassy field,

seemingly suspended like animations of themselves.

Even though there are only 3, I count them over and over,

envision them as if I were floating above their pasture,

observe the different stances they choose:

the 3 of them standing bottom to bottom, or

head to head,

sometimes in a row, one behind the other

sometimes side by side.

They stand where they want and nurse their calves.

They lie down in their field when they feel like it.

If the farmer wants to kill one, and it won’t get in the truck

he gives up and lets it live.

If the farmer wants to sell one, and it won’t get in the truck

he gives up and lets it stay.

I am glad I read this story by Lydia Davis.

I like to think of how she stood in her window and watched these cows.

I imagine how she may have moved from inside her house to outside her house,

depending on the weather, to stand and watch these cows,

month after month,

and although the details of their days are rather plain

she wrote a very essential story.

Right before I fall asleep I think about how there are no cows where I live

but there are mountains,

and I watch them move in this same way.

They open and close, depending on the weather

and like these 3 cows, these mountains are a few of the things left

that get to live exactly as they must.

(c) 2019 by Parlor Press. Used by permission.

Elizabeth Jacobson’s second book Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air won the 2017 New Measure Poetry Prize, selected by Marianne Boruch.

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Elizabeth Jacobson