Day 3:
In farming communities
not a week goes by
that some animal
doesn’t try to make
a break for it and
has to be herded
back to the home pasture
every new day brings
a Facebook Post –
pigs loose on Reidsboro Road
donkey running down Highway 362
goat with a red collar on Hollonville Drive
my favorite was the baby camel
someone reported
running down Concord Road
(the Sheriff’s Department went to
investigate and found it was
Nellie LaBerge’s Lllama)
you never know what you’ll
see in the country
but last week,
Wayne’s entire herd
of cows was loose
in the woods
between our farms
two bulls
among the herd
I was thinking
of lovely handbags
my husband was
thinking of
perfectly rounded cow
patties (dried cow poop)
(this isn’t out of the ordinary ~
just a few weeks ago we’d
had donkeys trying to
move onto the Johnson
Funny Farm
and my sister in law and
I joined in the chase
with other neighbors
to wrangle these two
asses and lead them
back home)
when Boo Radley
saw the herd of cows
eating his grass
the next day
he protected me
and our blades of grass
the black and white
bull turned tail and
ran into the woods
the milk and dark chocolate bull
stood its ground
Boo charged it
that’s when the brown bull
dropped its head
ready to charge
I felt surely in my
soul I was about to
witness Boo
being trampled
and killed
because
though he is small
he is tenacious
ten times the size
of that monstrous bull
in his inflated mind
Common Threads 