by Cosenza Hendrickson
Really it is not bad to be a cow.
At dawn she watches the gods
Spill their wine across the sky
At dusk she hears the chiming of the stars.
She drifts—a placid brown glacier—
Demolishing grass, efficient as Achilles
But without wrath, even for the gadfly
That hovers and stings
Hovers and stings,
Impersonal as snow or fire;
Pain simply to make one notice
One’s heartbeat
Stil thrumming.
When Io crossed the Bosporus,
And well-meaning Prometheus
Told her she would not always be a cow,
Is it any wonder she sobbed like the ocean?
Cosenza Hendrickson is a graduate student at BYU studying poetry. Her first experience with creative writing was when her fourth-grade teacher told her to go outside and record what she experienced. Since then landscape and nature has been a significant source of inspiration for her writing.
