Vantage Point

Last night I ate steak—rare and bloody. This morning
I walk to a vantage point, climbing the hill to watch
Angus, Hereford, Charolais, and you below—
your camera capturing the grainy grass of pasture.

Also attempting to engage the landscape, so pastoral
and aesthetic, I focus on the distance. I try hard to be
the graceful gentlewoman, but the dry, rocky slope
is slippery, and I am concerned about the clouds.

They come and go like hunger, like acceptance,
like contradiction. The cows continue to graze
aggressively as they slowly form into a linear herd
headed your way behind you, their soulful eyes
curious as they shadow the steps of a two-legger.

I once read that beef cattle were the first livestock
to have their genome mapped, that they have
about 22,000 genes, and 80 percent of those
bovine genes are shared with humans.

Our ancestors, rising in groups over ridges, eyes
prospecting for signs of food—greenery, water, motion,
were spared the subtle guilt of domestication. In Paradise,
the whole world was raw, and the goal, if you could,
was to eat before darkness fell and filled the earth.

Civilized with reflection, I wonder what it was exactly
that I ate last night, then watch the shifting sky
as one lone heifer, branded and perhaps carrying
her first calf, turns her ear-tagged head to gaze my way.

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