Night Camp, Leaving the High Pasture (Edit 7)

In a high mountain pasture
We lie drowned in the dark
Above us, the aurora strikes its bitter arc
And all night long, beneath the waters of the sky
The cattle shift and toll their way—
Land-wrecked monuments
Moving among the rocks

Buoyed and belled
Sounding their mindless matins
They lurch and sway
Through the perilous dim straits
Of summer’s meadows into autumn’s frost
The cattle drift in carillons of praise:
Tong-clang-clang… they toll the season’s knell
Back to their own safe harbor

Bell summons bell:
Harbor is a bell
Each beast a chapel