Cows in Winter

     Cows stand in the fields waiting for spring, the mud, cold like a Colorado river and not yet ankle deep because beneath the first two inches it is still hard and frozen from winter. They long for warm mud in the sunshine and the spring rain that feed the crocuses and the daffodils. The flowers with their colorful faces would usually be smiling from gardens along the back country road. But not this year. The gravel still sits on the road’s edge still deep from a winter’s collection and not yet swept up by the town’s street sweepers.  These monsters come around on warm spring days and collect the evidence of the winter as if to erase what we went through.  Perhaps it is so that the memory of the grit of winter is erased. So that it fades into our memory and eventually is gone like a snuffed out candle.   
     The cows stand and the wind presses against them. Bodies touching, tails to the wind, the air, traveling from the midwest where snow fell on cities, still held that bite. It is sharp on bare skin and is quick to chase people to their destination. The cold air laughs at the weakness of humans, our sensitive nature.