Morning on the Moors
        Haworth, England

The cow's heavy head swings over the oat grass and thistle
as if sweeping for mines. Our eyes latch
across the low stone wall. I've set out for the clarity
of the moors, the meticulous sky. Her brown eyes

hold centuries, mine the climb up cobbled hills,
through the mossy graveyard of Pastor Bronte
and his doomed offspring, the huge, flat slabs.
In the cow's eyes I see the earth's core. I must pass

her pasture on my rocky path to the sky, must skirt
the low stone pilings that divide cows from black-faced
sheep, their eyes borrowed from the cows. The day whitens
as I leave the soft bleating behind. Rugged as the backs

of dinosaurs, the moors roll open like a scroll of Genesis,
and the heather begins its siren song. When is resistance
a good thing? When to say enough? No more skulls
against the rocks. And yet, the pull is there, magnetic

as tides to the moon, the rhythmic slide toward
unthinking. I'm smack in the heather now,
my ankles dressed in purple. I lower my hand.
Ah, these lovely curls are rough as rawhide.

In the distance the cow lows in her pasture.
I plod on, through tangles of bindweed,
the soft pink eyes of willow herb, the land's
ambivalence, its long, blank stare.

Copyright © 2009 Elizabeth Volpe All rights reserved
from The MacGuffin
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission