Absently-mindedly Mowing My Lawn

A minor puzzle: that childhood riddle

about the brown cow who eats green grass

and gives white milk, but any farm boy knows

there’s a greater: how, in early spring, 

wild onions begin to flavor

that milk as no grass ever can.

Milk smelled only like itself

until the cows found wild onions,

and then the odor emerged from the teat,

hung heavy over the pail,

the taste sometimes so tainted 

that we fed it to the pigs.

No longer on a farm,

I buy mine from the store

and seldom think about the dairy’s pasture land.

Only rarely—like today, 

riding my mower over four acres

of spring grass with tufts of onions here and yon—

do I wonder where they grow, and why—

how it is that seasons, 

adorned with colors and sounds, 

are likewise rich in tastes and smells,

and think how this clean plastic jug 

I bring home from the store

bears nothing but milk, for which, 

coming from some distant place

and tamed though it is,

thanks must, nevertheless, be said.

            © David Black, 2016

Jersey cow in field
Photo by Jamain from Wikimedia Commons