Butter

of milk and honey, but at

the Iowa State Fair I glimpsed

a cow fashioned of butter.

It lived behind a window

in an icy room, beneath klieg lights.

I filed past as one files

past a casket at a wake.

It was that sad: a butter cow

without a butter calf. Nearby I spied

a butter motorcycle, motorcycle-

sized, a mechanical afterthought

I thought the cow might have liked to ride.

You don’t drive a motorcycle; you ride it.

But not if you’re a butter cow, not

if you’re a butter cow who’s seen, if

not the land of milk and honey, the land

of milk, and dwelled within it.

It had a short life span, the butter cow.

Before it died, I looked

deep into its butter eyes. It saw

my butter soul. I could

have wept, or spread myself,

for nobody, across dry toast.