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Strangest Cattle

by Johnny Packer
Chapter 2
Strange figures stood in the pasture one night,
thin as fence wire, bright as milk left out too long.
I never named them, never dared,
only watched their outlines breathe
like reeds bending in a current no one else could feel.

They did not walk.
They rearranged the space between one heartbeat and the next,
appearing where the ground kept no memory
of footsteps or weight.
The cattle froze with their heads lowered,
as if the air itself had become a judgment.

A flashlight I held sputtered sideways,
its beams leaning toward them
like a moth pulled by a cold sun.
Shapes flickered within their frames,
teeth of distant storms turning slowly,
a weather I could taste but not map.

One figure lifted a hand
that wasn’t a hand
but something folded too many times,
the way a letter creases itself
to hide the words it cannot bear to speak.
The night around it bent inward
as if listening.

I felt the smell of rain
before the clouds bothered to gather.
Felt a question settle in my ribs,
a question without language,
old as the first shadow cast on stone.
It curled there, patient.

By dawn the pasture was empty
though the grass leaned wrong,
flattened in a circle
that pointed nowhere.
I tell myself they were nothing more
than strange figures,
shapes a tired mind plays with
when sleep stands too far away.

Yet some evenings,
when the sky wears its bruises low,
I find that question breathing again,
steady and soft,
waiting for me to answer
what it never asked aloud.