ROSE-TINTED GLASSES

Our friend paints cows with human eyes.
The death of the 'Big Eyes' painter
            has just been revealed.
I wrote a piece about
             Belted Galloways
             roadsigns and laughter.

But rural life is not a total idyll.
Nor urban streets always despair.
The beasts in the field
             around our track would make
             a mire.  A mire of heroic proportions.
We'd have to shoo them away
             from the gate
             just to make it home.

I remember playing
             in a milking parlour.
We pretended, my cousins and I
             to be eating chop as
             the heavy gate clanged
             behind our udders.
Until I clanged the gate shut
             on a little finger.
That was on a different day
             than when I stepped
             upon a salient nail.

ROSE-TINTED GLASSES

It's no good trying to pretend
              that cattle can replace
              a cityscape.  Dystopia
              is not a universal faith.
The urban jungle isn't fit for beasts.
Rural folks live different lives
             than urban folks.
And cows don't fit the trains
              that travel underground.