In memory of Michael Allen <br /> <br />The height of one stall at odds with the next in your grandfather's byre <br />where cattle allowed themselves to speak only at Yule <br />gave but little sense of why you taught us to admire <br />the capacity of a three-legged stool <br /> <br />to take pretty much everything in its stride, <br />even the card-carrying Crow who let out a war-whoop <br />now your red pencil was poised above my calf-hide <br />manuscript like a graip above a groop. <br /> <br />The depth of a dent in the flank of your grandfather's cow <br />from his having leaned his brow <br />against it morning and night <br /> <br />for twenty years of milking by hand <br />gave but little sense of how distant is the land <br />on which you had us set our sights.<br /><br />Paul Muldoon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-dent/
