September Cattle by Annest Gwilym

'Annest Gwilym lives in North Wales, near the Snowdonia National Park in the UK. Her work has been published in various literary magazines and anthologies. She was the winner of firstwriter.com’s Fifteenth International Poetry Competition 2016/17. She edited and designed the e-book anthology Flowers in the Machine in 2017 on behalf of the Poetry Kit https://www.poetrykit.org/pkp/flowers.pdf (free download).' September Cattle

Boulders of blood and bone upholstered in velvet, warm breaths smelling of hay. Tails swipe away flies as I dance in front of them;

Swan Lake plays tinnily on my musical box with its spinning ballerina. I throw them windfall apples pitted with the hot buzz of September wasps: easy to dislodge, drunk on the cidery fruit. Cattle stampede: a lumbering gallop; shove and kick, eyes wild and swivelling, warm blood pulsing. Swallows gather on the wires for their epic journey. Ear-tags show these beasts are marked for death; behind them the field canters on to the carmine setting sun.