This old house

Forever, an old house has stood in a field,
A grey silent sentinel ghost of the past,
It stands consumed by the morning fog,
Leaning imperceptibly, it is unperturbed,
The house knows its value, its purpose remains,
People may forget history, the house will not,
Lives passed through  its doors and rooms,
Children once scampered and played on its porch,
Lazy hounds escaped the summer heat there,
How many meals were cooked in its kitchen,
What joy gathered there in its dining room,
It has seen men go off to war, never returning,
It has heard the moan of birthing pain,
Then, swelling with the cries of a newborn,
Silenced, Sunday hymns once sang its song,
Where old men whittled, a possum or two live,
A tree is growing up  though the porch floor,
Now forlorn, passed by, it is indistinguishable,
Time is swallowing it year upon year,
That boundless cavern has eaten its heart,
Its eyes to the outside world hollow, glass-less,
The house will slowly collapse into the earth,
While it stands, it holds the vault of memories,
But, just as the house, memories die with time too,
When they are gone, only the debris of life remains.

©2015, Donald Harbour

Cows are plotting to end the world

When the world ended the atmosphere blazed,
From horizon to horizon in a blue methane haze.

Homo sapiens died, their extinction complete,
No longer lesser creatures with forks would they eat.

The conspiracy planned since the dawn of time,
When the first rumen, humans killed to dine.

People had ignored the United Nations report
Instead laughing and saying: “It’s a crude joke of sort!”

There in words, as plain as day, it could be read,
“Cattle eliminations caused global warming,” it said.

But the truth was hidden by burps, belches and farts,
As the world’s cattle diligently performed their parts.

Each had a job to eat as much food as they could,
Ruminating gas production by thoroughly chewing their cud.

All this, while humans fought over oil prices, religion, tax,
Miley Cyrus CD’s, political parties, plastic boobies and sex.

Cows lay in fields placid, non threatening and benign,
Methodically eating, chewing, flatulating, biding their time.

The earth grew warmer as their efforts rose in the air,
While scientist begged humans to eat less meat, in despair.

Cow pies covered the fields as the green grass grew abundant,
Environmentalists argued over positions inane and redundant.

Then an upheaval so massive it’s hard to understand,
Cows the world over organized to make the last gaseous stand.

With an earth shuddering roar cows let loose a trombone blast,
Humans held their noses, grimacing, gagged with a gasp.

The skies were finally saturated to the fullest extent,
There was no other contribution, not a single cow could vent.

All bovines moved as if a perceived signal had been given,
To rivers and lakes and hidden valleys they were driven.

One volunteer cow stood on a Rocky Mountain height,
Its suicide mission, the methane atmosphere to light.

It struck a match, a beacon that flared a bright red,
And thrust it into the green layer just above its horned head.

The rest is history, there is nothing more one can say,
Only cows populate the earth no humans lived past that day.

Note: Several years past a Wall Street Journal article proposed “Cow Tax” in an effort to underscores the Greenhouse-Gas Divide. I thought; “Could there really be a grain of truth here?” The poem is a response to ‘what if’!
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©2014, Donald Harbour

A Greek tragedy

The honey red heifer is birthing,
a difficult calving under monstrous
roiling dark bellied storm clouds,

She has chosen to offer up her gift,
under a twisted, gnarled, ancient tree ,
the only old guardian of the pastures.

She bellows not understanding it is necessary.
In the midst of her agony the Hyades
conspire to muffle her wild-eyed complaints.

The bowels of the fields are bulging,
constipated with swollen verdant seeds,
anticipating an elixir from above.

These grassy tarns of seasonal
vivacity will explode, grasping
the pastures fertile beckoning thighs,

a rapturous rupture of the soil, an
orgasm of awakening to satisfy
the heavenly rain spiked thrusts.

In the midst of April’s tribulation
a nocturnal nuisance has arrived,
raucous, unyielding in its annoyance.

Somewhere in the fence hedge, above
natures pious conversation, piercing
the vernal bacchanal of the night,

a feathered creature speaks in
full tenor timbre, Pavarotti incarnate,
it choruses the drama of this Greek

tragedy, played out in the amphitheater
of creation. Will there be life, or, the
tearful damning gloom of death.

Thor’s mighty hammer dispels
the Stygian darkness with crackling
light, a proctor quieting the class.

With a pause, sweet as the kiss of dew,
there is a gasp of all the calamity.
Mother Nature gathers her children, watching.

Life has arrived in a wet gelatinous
blanket, loved with soft brown eyes
and a lick for the first calf of spring.

©2014, Donald Harbour