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The five poems below were inspired by Robert Chapla paintings during his Bay Area days. He and his wife, Lenice, now live in Vermont.
BOLINAS RIDGE WITH COWS and DRIVEN are from Bob's and my 2006 book, Across Currents.
My mug with my favorite mug
The six poems on this page are
COWS FLOWER
TWO COWS GAZE
AFTER THE FACT
BOLINAS RIDGE WITH COWS
DRIVEN
GRAZING SPACES
COWS FLOWER
Cows flower
out of surrounding hills
recently rained green.
Each tail a tendril,
cattle resemble
floral sculpture I've seen.
Starting, slight,
calf and calyx
unfurl, shine,
moving into
vernal breakthrough,
intertwined.
Slender stemmed,
bodies bulging wide,
bovine bouquets
cover the countryside.
(Earlier version published in Vol. 6, No. 1, Fall 2010, Bay Area Poets Seasonal Review)
TWO COWS GAZE
at each other, one amazed by the other
who has risen in a meditative state.
Levitating to an elevated plane
atop her cushion, this cow’s not
high on helium but on thought.
In her laid-back, bovine bliss,
convinced her friend will lift
after having had a chance to ruminate,
she won't nag with moos or kicks,
since no creature can resist
such upward floating to a space
that disallows excessive haste.
The bovines I’ve surveyed agree
that high’s the place all want to be,
where mindful herds might moderate
the pace that frays the human race.
Robert Chapla’s Two Cows Gaze
Robert Chapla’s Tight Knit Group
AFTER THE FACT
A pasture of colorful grass contains a cow cluster.
We, the absent other, see them crowd together
like a litter of kittens in a pet store window,
but these cows are not behind glass.
They have left the canvas, where
a moment of their movement remains.
Any flick of ear or tail is an illusion.
Once the paint dries, motion stops,
except in the mind. Four look
at the painter, their human recorder.
After that, after the fact,
we who will materialize later
take our turns, looking back.
Robert Chapla's Bolinas Ridge with Cows
BOLINAS RIDGE WITH COWS
The herd had begun to post a language,
but I can't read the words
because they've knocked over
most of the lumber
that comprised their sentence.
Two stand amidst a former fence
as if inhabiting the beginning of a phrase.
It contains letters and symbols I recognize:
a peace sign, a B, an N,
perhaps another N begun,
unless it's a V upside down,
some I's or buried L's,
but first, before everything, an O.
Composed in profile atop the ridge,
the two seem to inhabit a code.
Like a foreign language
fog will roll in to envelop them.
Perhaps oblivion is the word
whose remnants remain.
It might be in the clouds that arrive to grant them
a reprieve from assembling verbiage
in this, their current incarnation.
Robert Chapla’s A.M. Diablo Slopes
DRIVEN
The herd flows like a vat of molasses
emptied into early morning light
that falls on long, broad faces.
Snouts nudge obstructing bodies ahead.
Wavelike, earth-pounding, of one mind,
moving with purpose through scrub, foliage, each other,
unaware of their beauty, their rare color,
they head toward the rising sun.
An unknown force pulls them.
It’s their amorphous reason for existing,
one beyond them as they ease on
into life’s long, earthbound mystery.
Robert Chapla's Grazing Spaces
GRAZING SPACES
Where are we?
What landscape is this?
Is that a spaceship in the distance?
We must be on another planet.
Weren't we just watching a game on TV?
Where did my beer go? And my chips?
I don't remember ever eating like this,
head down to the ground. Wait!
I remember cows doing it back on earth.
Now that I can focus, I see you aren’t
yourself. We've been turned into cattle,
but what we're eating and walking on
isn't grass. It's more like cotton candy.
This new life might be sweet,
but I can't get a grip on it. I feel at least
as peculiar as I used to in that other world
we've come unstuck from.
Do you remember being human?
I'm already beginning to forget.
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