Whereby I Compare You to a Cow & Try to Dig My Way Out

In the zephyr left in the flail
Of a heifer's hoof & the whish of its tail
I reel
Eyes over ankles, somersaulting like the dust.

What lies in a cow's eyes?
Its hospitable stare,
Its irises of mahogany,
The beautiful long brushes of its cow lashes?

I'm not some bulbously mammalian Australian
Stirring curlicues with the salad tongs,
A carnivore at a barbecue.
What prize lies in a bovine's eyes?

I'm not a silly-hatted Hindu,
Love
Isn't sacrosanct,
It's little, real.

Like dust, & a flea, rolling,
Reeling like a porpoise
In the wind of a heifer's hindquarters.
I'm not, it isn't, not me, that sees

Through the harsh crust of shiraz
In a biker's moustache
An ecstasy in a plethora of leather.
Or the snazz of his boyfriend's handbag.

page 227

I saw the homes of its bovine eyes,
& Drifted out of mind, itched into
A rumination,
Bedevilled into a reverie on a ruminant.

I was the flea, squinting, biting
Its lip with flea-teeth, who itched.
& It hoicked up its hoof, made a flail,
It whipped its tail,

& The dust & a flea caught in a heifer's zephyr
Thought
Clearly out of the three-hundred & sixty degrees they reeled in,
That this is what is love:

I bite at its knees.