Cowgirl

Chocolate eyes tracked her movement
as she hauled wood, then sloshed water
an icy torrent torn from the stream
swollen now with runoff
tin buckets tipped, one by one
into the enormous white-legged troughs
in which girls like her once soaked
their skin to ruddy and scrubbed
with lye soap and sage.

The soft-eared ones trailed along behind,
steady, pausing from time to time
to nibble on a dandelion or tuft of fresh grass.
Their mouths turned, circular
as those great flat teeth worked
the tender spring greens to pulp
readily as the paired stone discs
crush grain to powder in the flourmill.

They were family, she and the hooved ones:
all girls, safe here, the one place in the world
where they were all just people.
So she dropped her buckets in the grass
and sat on a sunny hillock to drink
in the morning, watching the sluggish bees
bumble their low drone
among the first blossoms, the soft breath
of her snuffling companions tumbling
into the quick-nibbled shoots around her.

Rachel Westfall