A Day in the Year of an Ox

Yoke heavy

Nostrils singeing

In the Sun,

Glistening with fresh

Snotty sweat,

Black with deep flesh.

 

Track trodden, soft

And stodgy, bouldered

Thickly, sticky stoned.

Stoic foam it drips

And slips from tongue

To lip and lower,

Down, the rim of hairy

Fur, the hoary jaw,

The bull’s sound-

Piece, it grunts.

 

Loud it feels that

It  could groan but

No, its eyes are down

And grooves

Cut fissures in

The soul as soil

Is churned and

Churned

And churned.

 

[6^th October]