The cows dead in the vast pastureland

were shot as they grazed.

                                             They look like chunks

of basalt until the mind adjusts to what it sees.

Here, something with hooves, ears, a tail.

There, a barreled body on its side, a number 

burned in its hip beside a brand like a symbol

from an old scroll.

                                 They died nameless but not

without identity: cows one through five,

and two nursing calves.

                                          All night, they laid

next to the powdered road, among the sands

and sagebrush, a stone’s throw from pinyons,

holes blown from ribs into lungs, from backs

into intestines, a blush oval-shaped dish of skin

around each entry.

                                  The news shows two adults

but neither calf.  That would be too much

even for those bred in this rough country,

where generations have nursed on heaving,

iron-laden lands.

                               It’s one thing for God

to take what rightfully belongs to him

through drought, hunger, heat.

                                                        It’s another

when a man stands at the edge of a road

that’s not even his, points the tips of his boots

at each animal he aims to shoot and kills

a whole herd, even the babies.  Easy targets

if you’re willing to trespass, to get dirt

on the hems of your jeans, and flee

before you’re seen.

                                  The shooter moved

under a dark cape below Taurus the bull

squinting from the stars, seven girls

dancing forever in his shoulder,

The Pleiades carried to the heavens

to escape Orion the hunter who vowed

to kill every brute in the world.

                                                       Then, morning:

the night sky’s inverse.  Seven dead cows

a black constellation against bright earth,

dark angels whose story’s written in the dirt.

—

“Five Cows, Two Calves Found Shot Dead in Pine Valley” is based on a story by the same title 

in St. George News, the online newspaper for Southwest Utah.