Magic, Cows, and Hallows

 

I drop the phone, now a book, onto the sweater trunk.
The dogs look down, go back to snoozing.
We're at the foot of the bed, reading 50,000 feet (spacetime)
above these poems, which are about Minnesota
in the 1960s. I reach out my arms and fly
over descriptions of hatching moons,
of alcohol and blankness and yet more moon.
We come down at the end,
palms balancing on either side of the phone,
touching down in Texas, in 2020, in daylight.
I want to call from the window for a magic cow,
for a tough, unbroken fairy tale, coastal prairie rangy;
I want the calf to come back fat and forgiving, 
for it to butt against the screen and call for my husband
to remember her from high school
and for her then to trample our neighbor's fence
and beckon the dogs and I and my husband
beyond the patches of yard stitched fence to fence
all the way to the woods, all the way
to the deer run.
These fairy tales will be sturdy enough to pull a cart;
a soft career of deer through woods piped and managed
then into the sudden maze of edgelands and weeds.
A dancing cow will lead us
beyond the sun and moon.

Carrie, thanks for the second prompt! James has put the kibosh on chickens, goats, and tiny, shaggy cows in the backyard (maybe he's worried they'd all end up inside, piled on the couch with the dogs and I, watching YouTube videos about tiny houses and dead malls), so my ranch will always be fantastical. And it will feature a couch full of animals. And a mosaic tile floor. And a library/sunken den. Goats with eyeglasses? Cows writing novels in nooks? All interior/garden design by Roxanne, of course. Miss you guys & hope your week is going well. :) 

-- Chrissa