Rain Always Follows the Cattle

 - A Poem for Susan -

Rain always follows the cattle,

or so say the old farmers well-versed

in folk lore, the reading of the signs

left in nature, like my grandfather

who swore by the cows as predictors of rain:

if they’re lying down, rain is coming in,

but standing up, these cud-chewing bovines

feeding, and there’ll be no rain, safe for gardening,

safe for haying, safe to work the land, safe

for a moonlit drive, a horse drawn cart plodding

around the field and down the lane with family,

a Saturday social, community coming together.

Or the moon, a quarter moon: he always said

if you could hang a bucket safely there, a feat

I couldn’t imagine, no rain would fall, but

if the bucket couldn’t safely hang there, but slip

right off, the moon not a good hook for a bucket

handle, rain would follow, water spilled from the bucket falling.

 

I never knew whether to believe him or not, too young

myself to tell if he was telling a story, making this up,

or if he had some vast wisdom, some secret knowledge,

some experience that I lacked. And now, 60 years later,

Gramp long gone from earth, joining the sages and old farmers,

I still don’t know, not sure to believe him or not; I’ve seen

the truth about cows and moons often enough, sometimes accurate,

sometimes not, just not sure, city born, city bred, “civilized,”

for I have not learned those ancient skills of nature’s signs,

divination, folklore, untrusted, a sin even, of witchcraft,

a lost art gone with the grave, gone from us the unbelieving,

the unsure, the ignorant of country ways, lost

to a future grounded in proof, grounded in certainty.