As a herdsman I would sit
late in my barnyard room
wanting sometime to tend
a herd of poems - to find
them waiting in the dusk,
far out where the pasture ends
and the woods begin, and sing
them back.

                  But every morning
I would go back singing
to the cows, back to the smell
of dung and new milk.

Half pretending and half
believing someone would hear,
I kept singing. And I
would sing a little louder
up and down the tie-up
behind the steaming cows.

Even then I wanted
to be a good herdsman.