BUTTERCUPS
He would wake in his room,
the only one in the house
into which sun shone
in the early morning, and rise
to go out to the upper pasture
to bring the cows for milking.
By mid-June the pasture was deep
in buttercups. The cows would not
eat them, the bitter oxalic acid.
He would wade in and before
crossing halfway would be wet
to the waist and shivering.
The cows were always unwilling
to leave so he would have
to criss-cross to keep them moving.
His teeth sounded like the rocks
in his pocket if he had remembered
to gather them in the lane.
The rocks saved steps and vented
some of his anger
at the lonely stupid beasts.
He would chew the bases of buttercup petals
and feel the poison bite
the tip of his tongue,
temptation as old as humankind.
He had tried carrying a stick
and beating the flowers down
before him, but the hard work of it
got him almost as wet.
He resigned himself each year
to wait their death,
found some small residue of pleasure.
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