The soles of my feet love
the warm pine floor of your cabin
and you’ve left cold milk,
the syrupy smoke

of dark-roast beans, a window open
where the swelling sky, peaked
and hesitant with rain,
lights a glass bowl: minnows

who survived the bucket home,
darting, one night older. Miraculous,
alive, their delicate green lines
betray miniature fillets – too small

for pine nuts and wine, tougher
than tap water, this brilliant
captivity. Isn’t it what
I’ve wanted, my whole life?

How slowly the cows’ eyes move, how slowly
they put their noses to the earth,
disturbed by nothing
so much as nothing, their long tails
flicking at flies and flies remembered.

A new mind, a mind of cows and grass,
a sky holding them all
plus the same number of clouds
as their glossy shoulders,
completing the fence posts and the hills
with a floating sadness.

In the field, a ladder
whose wooden legs Aristotle
carves with his intricate designs,
whose rungs move up through talk shows
where the poor are led by the hand
through Morality 101.

Near the top, Basho figures
on black rainwater in a rustic barrel.
Over the rise of his shoulder,
the butter is a startling yellow,
a sulfuric hiss
in the pan as I cook eggs this morning.

Yes, for my head a crystal ball
reflecting spatula, pitcher, salt.
Inside are the cows
listening with their famous patience,
with the shadowy cones of their ears,

and the grass as it rubs their hocks
with seed, and the sky
with its endless tolerance for skywriting,
the planes up there
looping their fabulous, icy lines.