LISTENING FOR EFFIE HILLIARD
Small bunch. Calves push 300 pounds.
Frizzled-ends of winter-hair after a month
of all-night frosts. Cows thin, ushered-in
to the lane, press the fence to watch –
ever-listening for their name as we brand:
one at a time to the whine of a twine,
slow drum of hooves upon wet sod, each
hoot tuned for every loop up in smoke.
Outside the pens patched with so many
metal panels that the eye ignores the boards,
wide green stretches even with a quiet sky,
leafless thickets of Blue Oaks whisper
another time: Effie on her white horse
leading a string of eighty cows and a couple
of coyotes to these corrals – one lone
woman calling, an ungodly caterwauling
echoed through this gate where young
men stared with their six head gathered.