Frostwriting

Sweden, 1847

by Cindy Hunter Morgan

SWEDEN, 1847

It is summertime and the cows
are grazing in mountain pastures,
stalked all day by women in white
aprons who sing wordless songs,
calling the cows, calling each other,
calling forest trolls hiding
beneath mushroom caps and
last autumn’s leaves.
The music is clear and pure
and travels easily through woods
and over hillsides, a high arc of sound
so beautiful that men three kilometers away
pause, lean on the handles of their scythes,
too charmed to work.
It is hard to find time to churn butter,
knit stockings, make cheese.
The days are so long,
the nights short and light,
all the women seem to do
is herd cattle.
The cows will follow their music
anywhere, and the women
have fallen in love with it too,
so easily does it pour from their mouths,
a liquid they are scarcely aware of producing,
a sound that is never low enough,
never far enough back in the throat
to swallow, to claim.
It is no wonder they are thirsty,
dipping ladle after ladle into their milk pails,
desperate for some trace of their art –
a taste of something they have sung,
music they ache to possess.