Leuacanthemum Vulgare and a Cow in Kyyjavi, Central Finland
(From a photograph on Wikipedia, with acknowledgements)
The photograph catches one ox-eye daisy
in sun in a meadow in Kyyjärvi
and a brown and white cow slouching up to pose,
view developments, or even (and fair enough)
grasp the nettle and sort out this name business
once and for all. Cows usually give wide
berths to ox-eye daisies, allowing
the rhizomes to take advantage, and the flowers
to take both credit and blame. But the flowers
sway guilt-free summers away as if,
if something matters, they couldn’t care less.
Classification as noxious weeds
they treat as a compliment. Invasive
gives them a purpose in life. This morning
they blotch the field-sides in swathes, http://www.flomaxbuyonline.com/ like white
blouses someone’s laid out to dry.
On days when peace of mind’s absent, it’s tempting
to flit off to central Finland and be
unavailable, but options like that
are for people who can. Here the ox-eye daisies
dazzle through June and then wither and seed,
and lie low for autumn.
Anyone wise in growth cycles and so on
will come to learn what the cows have learned
about what to do with ox-eye daisies,
and probably tend to do the same.
Robert Etty lives in Lincolnshire. His latest collection is A Hook in the Milk Shed (Shoestring Press) and a selection of his work appears in Something Happens, Sometimes Here: Contemporary Lincolnshire Poetry (Five Leaves).