Vox Populi
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Sean Sexton: No cause to count on mercies of the Earth
Hard Suite
But ere the circle homeward hies,
Far, far must it remove:
A E Houseman
Invernal ~
We’re in the spite of time.
What fills today, hungers tomorrow
and what saved for then, famishes
them now.
They pass through a just-opened gate
and keep walking—
not a head lowered to graze.
Where are they going?
—Yet a heifer finds a hollow,
penumbra of shade where the cold
couldn’t reach. She forages there
a little while, prospers.
Sarcasms of robins overhead:
raucous, reveling, just arrived
with strange tongues; far from
what kills them.
~~
The Scaly Calf
Left behind thing we found, coaxed to his
feet and drove through the gate where
he maundered, a little, quit again—
unseemly tumulus: heap with nose, ears
tail—vestige of calf-hood with nibbed off ends
—weakness in extremis.
Could he be allergic to his mother’s milk, thus
life itself; pus seeps through every crack of him.
There’s no cause to count
on mercies of the earth
where mouths lie in wait
All we think to know of
the world must come unlearnt
in the night.
~~~~
Copyright 2026 Sean Sexton
Sean Sexton was born and raised on his family’s Treasure Hammock Ranch and divides his time between writing, painting, and managing a 700-acre cow-calf and seed stock operation. He is author of May Darkness Restore: Poems and Portals: Poems (Press 53).
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Sean, your poems are filled with a deep wisdom. Thank you.
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Sean, as the others, I’ll read these poems again and again, and – in an inexplicable way – they take me to my childhood where I grew with nature, earth, where the heifer finds a hollow, where skylarks rose (like the dragons flying high to find a mate who can match them – that probably doesn’t make any sense at all, only to those who were young and read the books 🙂 where calves and foals died before they could stand, and where we were ‘in the spite of time’. I just bathed in the music of the words, and ended with you on this truth: ‘All we think to know of the world must come unlearnt in the night.’ Thank you for these extraordinary poems.
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Sean, your poems are so visceral. I felt their texture and yearning so intensely, I felt an urge to read aloud. Thank you for allowing us to witness with you.
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Thank you. I’m still whirling in the words, not ready to grab the side to look at them. I think if I said that in any other group, folks would think I am nuts. Here I trust it will be understood. I will return to the poems as I often do during the day, but for now I am watching finches in the pines and orange tree along with Tashi who is on cushions piled on the couch by the window, her large black ears straight up.
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The “hard” truth of the “world” always in Sean’s poems, eloquent and deeply honest.
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yes, well-said!
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I read them aloud — and listened to them settle in the room — not leaving, needing to be read again a few times more. These will not be “unlearned” (or unread) “in the night.” And the verb maunder I had forgotten and love again. Then — allow me this close, maybe too maniacally close reading — but that little comma between “maundering”, and “again” — what a difference it makes in the tone & cadence/rhythm of that sentence. How I love to learn from your poems, Sean.
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That scaly calf, I suspect a new-born and deserted by its mother is a worry to the rancher that she, the mother, or worse yet, the sire of the strange off-spring was a genetic mutation. That happened once in our herd. A heifer’s first calf (we’d believed she would be one of our herd matrons) was a “freak” outcast by its mother and her sisters. The calf was euthanized and the mother delivered to the stockyards….so, back to Yeats here, this poem is the beauty….the subject of the poem, the strange genetics that made the calf, terrible.
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oh, yes. Thanks, HC.
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I believe the calf was a genetic anomaly, a seml-lethal gene in its makeup, which means “doesn’t survive to puberty.” Lethal of course: perishing at birth or even before. I really do think he (it was a male) was born hyper-allergic to his mother’s milk. HC: Are there human parallels? I feel a little devious subjecting you all to this in retrospect. What a great, generous community we comprise!
Muchisima Gracias!
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I’m not an immunologist, so your question, my friend, Sean, is beyond my pay grade. I know you’ve told a true story….so I’d say, if you saw the calf at birth and it looked normal, it could have been a milk allergy…but a lot of time would have passed before the calf developed its ugly and lethal skin changes—like a few weeks, I’d think. If it was born the way you describe it, I’d go with the genetic explanation…..ANYWAY, you’ve made a beautiful poem from the misfortune. Strangely and wonderfully beautiful.
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There’s much to learn and much to ponder from these two poems. They remind me that nature is not all beauty or a sea of tranquility, but that our language can ameliorate its indifference to the plight of some, such as the scaly calf. At least for us humans.
Sarcasm of robins? Maybe as they worm their way into our psyches at dusk with their endless sunset chirps. I’ve seen birds in Florida pick a meal off the backs of cattle.
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Thank you for these images, Jim.
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Every Sunday, my husband, Don, and I drive two hours down to Tamarac to spend the day with my sister, now in a dementia-care home. Two hours back, as well. During those journeys, I read Sean’s poems to Don. I have all his published books, so I can go from one to the other. Don, who loves cars and all machines–just the way his mind quirks–also loves Sean’s poems. He listens keenly, as I watch his eyes and mouth move slightly, shift to the dynamic of Sean’s words.
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Lovely post, Bonnie. Thank you. I love Sean’s poems as well.
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Oh,.these are wonderful poems!
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aren’t they?
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We haven’t seen the first robin this year. Very strange!
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We’re in the spite of time.
I feel a sense of shock – the spite of time – what a line! This entire poem fills me with that shock – extraordinary in its fresh precision. Thank you!
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Shocked me as well this morning! Sadness and notoriety mistakenly dressed in the dark in the same suit of clothes.
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It’s a great poem, rich with metaphoric insight and rolling rhythms.
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Oh, Sean, I think you have the start of a new poem there. Today’s poems are stellar. I will be revisiting them — often. Bravo!
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