A Water Buffalo

A Water Buffalo

A gray brown beast lumbers down the cobbled path,
stops to pull grass that skims its stomach, brushes its dark eyes.
The animal wallows in a bog, a coat of chocolate drowns flies,
hooves sink and water pools.
The creature defecates piles of heat and stench, round discs of volcanic feces,
circle on top of circle, a soft mess
left to the rain or hardened on the path
shoveled by straw-hatted women in rubber boots,
fetched by someone to fertilize what remains of a garden—
a clutter of tin cans and Styrofoam growing weeds and herbs.

Long ago the highrises called from across the water—
the children left.
No memory or fondness for mosquitoes, sweat and toil,
shacks of stone and asbestos, a merciless idyll
unforgiving in heat and rain. Hunger was always near.
Leaving was the dream.
The yoke came off. All were freed.


* * *


Smog curls around the edge of the bay.
Bulldozers, concrete, a new road.
You have split off and multiplied.
The ferry brings others from distant lands
others more from highrises across the water,
all gawk and prod, hit and tease, such a meeting of descendents!
Necessity became inconvenience,
curiosity, spectacle. Enough, enough, enough.
A bellow and charge, stomp and gore.
There, watch: a man tossed to the air,

Hounded and hemmed by autos and parking lots,
you yield to houses of glass and light.
Oh, the shame of an agrarian past.
Humbled, you retreat up the mountain,
hide and huddle in an open field.
The wait begins.
The rope and gunshot, the long painful drag across a field.
You bleed and weep, moan loud and long,
shoved into a truck that carts you away.