Kind Hearts

 

If you live in the country by meadow and hill,

You watch how the animals rarely are still,

The hoofed and the horned things have quaint little ways,

To fill out the hours and pad out the days.

 

A cow is a creature with little to want,

No need for the college or baptismal font,

A stately progression from byre to the block,

McDonalds just waiting and watching the clock.

 

And when they are needy like girls on the pull,

They get the A.I. man and never the bull,

And though he smiles gently and has a nice name,

For the poor ruddy heifer it isn’t the same.

 

The sheep by her own wants is top of the class,

She spends all her time eating serious grass,

One haircut a year and no work to be done,

The whole of her life is a bundle of fun.

 

But are they content I’m inclined to think not,

Yet they seem quite happy with what they have got,

With flystrike and scrapie to fill out the time,

The whole of existence is really sublime.

 

A Pony it seems is a burdensome thing,

He’s rarely a Pegasus shorn of the wing,

There’s hay in at one end and mulch at the tail,

And constant expense for the farriers nail.

 

With saddles and bridles and all sorts of tack,

Its down to the bank just to barrow cash back,

And so you must spend like the prodigals curse,

But nil desperandum a racehorse is worse.

 

And so to the pigs that I frankly admire,

A coating of mud is a natty attire,

A fine flush of bristle not pompous or proud,

A generous being never gawky or loud.

 

I think to myself if the Buddhists are right,

To return and return when the old soul takes flight,

And though not the way of a prelate or a prig,

For reincarnation please make me a pig.

 

I can see myself now as a pot bellied boar.

Just to wade in the wallow how could I want more,

With the old sow beside me two snouts in the bin,

A pot bellied popsey to succour my sin.

 

But fanciful notions are easy to write,

As I sit here content in the dark of the night,

While out in the moor there are lambs in the fold,

And the night duty shepherds stand stark in the cold.

 

I love my life here and would want for no change,

Where the kith and the kind are the safe and the strange,

The hoofed and the horned things are here but a while,

So learn as you watch them and watch as you smile.