Unfurling the mind’s filaments feels good- <br />Freeing them, letting grass-green and wind <br />Shred them over the fields, <br />The hills, the cows, the undulant woods, <br />The silence. Not trying to find <br />Anything, not waiting, lining the breeze. <br /> <br />Lowing, brown sound, comes from behind a hedge <br />Soothing the last wrinkles out of the air…. <br />Till volume and pitch rise – a crescendo <br />Of anxiety. Past the style I see them- <br />Calves. A roar now, approaching fast- there <br />Are so many, running at me as though <br /> <br />They needed. Curious, leaping, eyes <br />Liquid and large beyond the scope of lakes. <br />Sweet ungulates. Along the placid slope <br />Their mothers graze unconcerned. The rise <br />And rise of sawing sound shakes <br />Me. These young lives are male. <br /> <br />They will never grow. Slaughterhouse stuff. <br />Seeing what is known already scythes <br />Through the stalk of the mind and makes dull, <br />Darkens a shining day. Walk away.. The rough <br />Sound dies. A clear and icy calm lies <br />Down on warm sunset paths. Prospects, full <br /> <br />And sunlit open again. But those deaths <br />To come hang about like bloody cobwebs. Down <br />The red road towards home, then, the only sound <br />My footsteps and thoughts. Suddenly, ahead <br />A halt. Picking a moment, soft and round, <br />Out of the fading afternoon, bound <br /> <br />Two small and velvet wild ones from the wood, <br />Brown and gold as the evening, little heads <br />Poised, curious. Again a swimming gaze <br />Fixes on mine. Deer. Aptly named. But these could, <br />Unfenced, take their leave. Nervously alert, they fled, <br />Unhurried, off our road, into their shade.<br /><br />Richard Blanch<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-afternoon-of-horns/
