Then it began again,
the truth comes by weeks,
that’s what work is for,
the numbers press
0ur tender skin.

2.
But who is talking,
who dares to have
opinions about seven
or thirteen or nine
or even one? Is one
even a number or just
what is? We used to love
cowboy music, ‘cause cowboys
have no weeks or weekdays,
they just have cows, cowday
every day keeps numbers at bay
till a solitary horseman
herds them home.

3.
I think of what such music said,
but I haven’t heard it for years
and I haven’t even seen a cow
since two days ago, soft brown
Jersey, in the Churchtown barn,

4
In fact you saw the cow, whole
barn full of them, you told me, I took your word for it.
O Monday is a prairie spread
deep into a shimmering horizon
and I woke with no numbers
in my head at all but only
now they come toppling in,
bales of hay, tumbleweed.

10 April 2023