What did the woodenheaded child think on those fall days?

Sometimes the cows came up from the creek and caught her

up on a maple branch, reading and eating an apple.

(Didn’t they taste better then with the green flavor

still in them?)

She waited and the compact Jerseys waited with her.

She wanted to leave, to go home, but even as small and docile

as the cows were, she was afraid of them and their methodical

appetites that invaded the mysterious copse of maple

and alder, the leaves yellowing and rusting, swaying

and causing the shadows to sway

then fluttering in the least breeze like a million butterflies set

loose and the sun metered and piercing. It was almost too much

for the child, who wondered for a moment, the teeniest,

tiniest moment, if she was the object

of their adoration. But that couldn’t have been, could it—

because after all she was a creature of homework and chores

and woodenheaded at that—what grace

could she confer climbing down, and scrambling across the

open field while the ponderous creatures watched

then, with the slow heft of barges, turned to follow

as if hoping for enlightenment. Such frightening, substantial beasts—

though their eyes were large and soft. But she was no Messiah

and tried in vain, from the other side of the fence to shoo them

back into their own precincts of devotion. And still

they remained, teaching her much about patience,

and plodding, and the disappointment inherent in idols.