Feedlot Cattle in The Rain. (Poetry).

FEEDLOT CATTLE IN THE RAIN

Coral Hull

The sky unloads onto crowded cattle,
Constrained in pens, mud caked to the knees,
A season of rain across thick red hides.
The lonely look of cows bogged down,
In faeces & urine,
Rainfall compounds the problem.
Fermenting grain churning through intestines,
Reducing appetite & leading to wasting,
Where they stand still.
Wind-chill lighting up the joints into fire.
Until legs fall out from underneath them
& they splash into their own waste.
What do they think about all day at night,
Robbed of herd & foraging? They must be mad,
Sad & cold, but still they breathe, they shiver.
The hoofs & skin surrounds are softened:
Sole ulcers, sole penetration, foul-in-the-foot,
Dilated blood vessels & swelling,
The spread of wet infection,
Across blankets of rain-soaked cattle,
Virus & ringworm trucking them in,
To dark nights of heavy rain,
Boredom, stress & lameness,
Respiratory diseases from high grain diets,

Bone-cold beneath the stars.
Rain drenched beef with fear in the horns,
Legs buckled in at the knee-ache.
For companionship: their suffering kind,
Grey thunderclouds & a dose of dark humanity,
Facilities for loading & Loading cattle,
Waste disposal equipment, fuel storage
& a sodden slaughterhouse,
With concrete floors for the blood to wash off
Rushed into the rain with a hose.
Processed death on its way to a river in flood.
The run-off an over spill of sloppy residuals:
Stockpiled dry & wet manure, pesticides,

Antibiotics, pharmaceuticals, artificial fertiliser,
Growth hormones, micro-organisms, pathogenic
Bacteria & 5000 cattle dead from botulism.
This goes into the river system..
The algae blue green flow, moving through
Landscapes sick from dying cattle,
Knee deep in mud & grief,
Swollen in floodways or bulldozed into pits.

Coral Hull, Australian writer has published extensively. Her poems have appeared in anthologies and literary journals in Australia, America and Canada. She is presently completing her first novel.