Listen to them cows beeling
Ayesha Chouglay
their baritone peals softer than the auctioneer’s drawl, the man’s voice, God-like, more rap than the gavel
their market my Clapham Junction, lives set anew, long stick in hand, brolly in mine the Lincoln Red the soft tan of an Irish Setter, trees ice cream churning out the windows
and after, mud shod boots tramping the lanes of low hedges
the flat expanse the white of an egg spreading, roads the yolk, tarmac hob,
land feeding us on, mizzle blushing our faces
we vergers of the verges walk the lanes, parish to parish, hand to hand
mouth to cheek to say hello, food to mouth to say something of love, I buy tin foil chocolates for a party in Herne Hill, the fat of the meat will make your hair curl
Mickey and Minnie, the pigs slaughtered each year, magically grown anew, like teeth to the fairy, sermons are poems, fed from one mouth to another, chine, chime, chine
during the week we farm, I stare at the keyboard like a prayer, at weekends we cycle the lanes, I, Sam, preaching, the wooden angels look down upon us, I photograph their
faces, hidden up in the rafters, safe, an ex used to call me angel, biblically, love, they would be a whirl of eyes, my eye ploughs one furrow at a time, the
shire horses with their slow plod, time Softly settling, worked into, there’s something in my eye
