Elvis considers eating Yeats, then sits calmly (below) while I read to him. Normally, he prefers Sandburg or Frost, but he, like me, is developing his spiritual side. It is his journey.
March 14, 2008 – Cloudy, warming. Snow and ice tonight. I have come to greatly love Elvis, my gentle 3,000 lb Swiss Steer, sold to me by Peter Hanks, a tough dairy farmer who couldn’t bear to send this loving creature to market. I visit Elvis daily, scratching his ears and nose, and bringing him apples and cornstalks and once in awhile, donuts. He is a true contemplative and once in awhile I like to go out and sit on a pile of hay, think out loud and read to myself, or today, to him. Hard to do in the summer, with all the flies, or in the winter, when it’s cold. I have a month or so.
I’ve discovered W.B. Yeats lyrical poetry in my Hospice work, where it often moves people to tears, and so I took Lenore – the fearless Rose will not go within 100 yards of Elvis, nor will the usually gregarious Izzy – and decided to read a poem to Elvis. Elvis loved the book by Yeats, an nearly ate it, but was distracted when I tossed an apple slice at him. I then read the poem “The Fool by the Roadside,” and took another photo of Elvis during the reading. He seems to love being read to, and often closes his eyes while I read. That could mean I am boring him, but I don’t think so. We often sit next to one another, perhaps one of the oddest couples in contemporary farm life. I did not imagine, at any point in my life, that I would love such a monster and read poems to him. We are both on a spiritual trek.
“The Fool by the Roadside”
“When all works that have
From cradle run to grave
When thoughts that a fool
Has wound upon a spool
Are but loose thread, are but loose thread:
When cradle and spool are past
And I mere shade at last
Coagulate of stuff
Transparent like the wind
I think that I may find
A faithful love, a faithful love.”
– W. B. Yeats
Elvis loves to be read to, and half closes his enormous eyes during poetry readings