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Sky-Cattle
Placid sky-cattle drank from my eyes . . .
—Federico Garcia Lorca
Clouds, not cows, mutters the mud-
caked hippie with half a million miles
of hitching heartache under his boots as
he clambers into the truck's cab,
riding shotgun, & tosses his duffel bag
into my backseat. He knows who broods
& refuses to go quietly into this rain-pelting
night as we begin counting the mile makers
on our way from Moline to Omaha, although
he admits he hankers some after a clean
set of sheets but finally decides to settle
for a dry Anyplace, hunkered down
beneath an overpass over which lowing,
slat-sided cattle trucks lumber along
Interstate 80, keeping him awake,
drubbing overhead, heading west-
ward toward the swollen Missouri &
the pandemonium of spring runoff from
torrents of rain, the mad-eyed cattle crazy
with panic, bellowing their brains out so that
no one is able to get any sleep & is still wide-
awake to greet the ash-colored morning.
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