Saga of the Sanpitch Volume 17, 1985 - Sanpete County

About the time when I was ten or twelve
We had an old red cow my father called
Strychnine—
Because she was so poison-mean„
She always knew she could outsmart a kid like me.
Sometimes when I would put the stool down
And sit, and place the bucket on the ground,
She'd stand still, pretending to be peaceable.
But when I reached to try to take her milk,
She'd sidle leftward
And move her rump just out of reach,
Then turn her head and look at me as if to say:
Don't fool around with me, you little squirt.
But if I got her in a corner where she couldn't
move like that
She had a bag of tricks to justify her name.
(That sounds a little like a pun, doesn't it?)
PORTRAIT OF A POISON COW
Halbert Greaves
1904 Herbert Avenue
Salt Lake City, UT 84108
Professional Division
Second Place Poetry
26
At other times she made me think she'd changed
her ways
And look contented while I milked--for about a
minute,
Just long enough for her to calculate
The length of her tail and the distance to my head,
Then, with the speed of an arrow" and the sting
of a whip,
She'd wrap that tail around my face.„
It hurt. She would savor her success
And glare at me again, triumphantly, maliciously,
joyfully.
Now and then she'd let me milk just fine,
Almost down to stripping time;
But when I began to think I had her tamed,
She'd snap her right leg up
And fast as a hummingbird slap it down again
And kick the bucket--near the top, inside.
And splatter milk all over me.
My father had a flair for naming cows."-