How lonely your field is.
I pass it every day with a leaden heart.
My bovine friends…Gone now.
Senselessly “sent”
for more burger-murders,
for more bleeding of the rare,
to line more wallets.
Your lowing loveliness;
how you huddled into the hill,
when the storms came.
Pulling down the boughs of oaks
for you to graze on. A treat
from the muddy stubble, the slip-sliding,
the delicate nibbling on sunken blades.
Our gate-side greetings.
How you let me stroke your faces;
lapped at my hands like
a life-saving salt-lick.
So loving, so trusting…
How I spoke out loud
(and didn’t care about
rushing joggers, amused dog walkers,)
recalling the Promise
that it will all End,
that you will have Justice,
that it will STOP one Day;
if we would only
break the Curse, speed it up,
by using our Free Will…
Your well worn, cloven paths,
still so visible; the red earth
which held you, bleeds out.
The buttercups won’t grow there.
Your shrunken pats,
broken, fewer, but
still feeding the flies.
Heidi Stephenson
Art: Sue Coe
This poem is a follow up to a recently published poem in IT about Heidi stumbling across an abattoir van stuck in a country lane, not far from a field of cows she greeted on her daily walks.
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