Monday, November 30, 2009

Cownundrum

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: For whatever it's worth, and I assure any enthusiast that it isn't much, the following was based on my observation that cows always show immense curiosity in my tripod. As soon as I take camera in hand and park tripod near by, it becomes a new field of exploration for cow brains to digest. Cows who previously had no thought to move, spot it standing there from across the yard. Many times while distracted photographing one cow, I've turned in time to glimpse another shy from the tripods falling heft, and in time to snatch it up before she moves in to sniff at her fallen prey.

A COWNUNDRUM

What is it about my tripod that catches the imagination of cows?

Perhaps it's the physics of the thing,
A philosophical flight by kinekind
Into the calculus of matter
And the stability of a trinity
And the ultimate futility of it all?

Or could it be the buxom milkmaid she longs for,
Humming on her stool her cowtown blues?
Or before that the fatted calf,
So utterly contented, beside the man on the stool
And the whine of his whetstone?