Sometimes, in the course of my ordinary workday, I encounter the most honorable of human beings, where the greeting of "namaste" - recognizing the divinity in the person present in front of me is palpable. This cold wintery afternoon, such did occur for me.A father of a now adolescent that I have known for some time often tells me about his daily travails as a farmer. He has a a small dairy farm and paticipates completely in all aspects of his cows lives. Today he told me about the waiting for a cow to birth and what it means to participate in the calving, to know the rhythms of his cows natural cycles that he can predict when the bag of waters will break, how soon after he will be needed to help with the birthing of the calf. On rare occasions, the cow struggles and needs a c-section. The new calf depends on the farmer's presence because there can be fragile moments in the first moments a newborn calf begins to breathe. So the farmer is waking up frequently during the long cold winter nights, walking through snowy fields to the barn to help birh these calves.We talked about how he feels about his animals and this is what he said,"If you love them , care for them, feed them, keep then clean and healthy, if you treat them real gentle-like, they will love you, they will be your best friends. It is easy to see when an animal is mistreated, they are unloving, mistrutful, angry, afraid. Oh, yes, I have my favorites pretty much from birth and get attached to them, we give them names...:Such plainly truthful words, the same is true of how we treat or mistreat each other. I am aware of how far away from the natural rhythms of life I have become, what wisdoms of walking out to a barn on a snowy night to the birthing of a calf can hold and a simple wish to return to those truths.... A March Calf by poet,Ted Hughes
Right from the start he is dressed in his best - his blacks and his whites
Little Fauntleroy - quiffed and glossy,
A Sunday suit, a wedding natty get-up,
Standing in dunged straw
Under cobwebby beams, near the mud wall,
Half of him legs,
Shining-eyed, requiring nothing more
But that mother's milk come back often.
Everything else is in order, just as it is.
Let the summer skies hold off, for the moment.
This is just as he wants it.
A little at a time, of each new thing, is best.
Too much and too sudden is too frightening -
When I block the light, a bulk from space,
To let him in to his mother for a suck,
He bolts a yard or two, then freezes,
Staring from every hair in all directions,
Ready for the worst, shut up in his hopeful religion,
A little syllogism
With a wet blue-reddish muzzle, for God's thumb.
You see all his hopes bustling
As he reaches between the worn rails towards
The topheavy oven of his mother.
He trembles to grow, stretching his curl-tip tongue -
What did cattle ever find here
To make this dear little fellow
So eager to prepare himself?
He is already in the race, and quivering to win -
His new purpled eyeball swivel-jerks
In the elbowing push of his plans.
Hungry people are getting hungrier,
Butchers developing expertise and markets,
But he just wobbles his tail - and glistens
Within his dapper profile
Unaware of how his whole lineage
Has been tied up.
He shivers for feel of the world licking his side.
He is like an ember - one glow
Of lighting himself up
With the fuel of himself, breathing and brightening.
Soon he'll plunge out, to scatter his seething joy,
To be present at the grass,
To be free on the surface of such a wideness,
To find himself himself. To stand. To moo.
lovely :-)
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