Each winter until, finally,
barely spring, the black
angus cows returned
to graze the fields we rented
to our neighbor, to drift through our high
mountain meadows past glory
holes and the half-buried
barbed wire a homesteader
nailed a hundred years
ago to the trees.  All month,
I have missed them, though
perhaps in the springs past
that we’ve had of days and days
of solitary jays and the tiny
mouse skulls that I pocket
to hold tenderly in my hand
and show you, this day is still
only the day before the day
of their coming, the day before
they will once again wander
up ancient paths, their hooves
chipping at the old cow pies
that our dogs, ash now, rolled in.  
This spring, I think, far
into mid- summer, I will wish
for them, for their calves sleeping
midday in old winter
grass, tucked so quietly in
as if they were a dark blossoming
before the evening’s dream:
the earth returning everything
to us now, perhaps musky
and heavy with its clustered yarrow
and its blue harebells of grief,

but here.