Black Angus

There is a dusting of frost on the Angus this morning; I had to do a double-take.
The last time I had seen them, they had been running around the yard, one behind the other, lumbering really, their heaving, massive bodies propelled along by what looked like effort.
They reminded me of overweight, out of shape men.
When I marveled to my friends, the one who has raised animals for family food laughed
that I had thought their running odd, and said it was normal for them to run.
There had been four boys that day; I had counted.
This is how I think of them now: boys, not men. Two black, one brown, another black, running in a line.
They seemed to be playing.

This morning, I saw them again and was just as intrigued as the last time, when their running together caught my eye.
I pass them every time I drive this way; some days I forget to look.
There was a mantle of white sparkling on the back of one of them, and I looked quickly for the others to see if they, too, were glittering in the bitter cold.
All were wearing the same cloak of an early morning in winter, a veil of hoarfrost.
One was rubbing his head against a pole in the ground.
One or two were lying down nearby, one was walking off in another direction.
I like their ordinary presence, so casual, so unquestioning.


The Angus live next door to the school.
The teenagers play football and lacrosse on a field they share with those steam-engine-like Angus.
There is a small stream and perhaps a barbed-wire fence between them.
Maybe this is all that is needed to keep the Angus at bay, to keep them from charging taunting teenage boys and throwing them afield like home runs.
Twitching their tails, caught up in their own thoughts, chasing one another around the yard on some days, rubbing their faces against poles on others, wearing frost on an early March morning, lazing in the shade on a sultry August afternoon, all the while watched over by someone I have never seen, someone who must watch them closely, someone who will know when it is time to slaughter their history of frost and sunshine and turn them into food.