Cowherd’s Sonnet

              Sonnet 0001

In a place where milk streams toward the pail,

My heart spills complaint like grapes crushed for wine.

O God!  What God grows mute at such prevail?

To scorn these wings once scaling heav’ns sublime.

Is this my fate?  My station a cowherd?

Have not I walked in academic halls?

To wear such splattered dung be my reward?

I shake my fist that to this end, I’d fall.

Yet, in my rage, I watch sparrows descend

To deftly pluck their barley kernel meal

From cattle dung, no less, such daily bread,

Then up to parlor rafters praises peal.

Struck dumb at such epiphany revealed

My melted heart, to God’s provision, yields.

by Ron Silflow