Sweet Poem: Butter by Andrea Cohen

Dear readers: it is now time for me to share with you the most beautiful poem I have read, possibly ever, but definitely this week. It is entitled Butter and was written by a brilliant soul called Andrea Cohen. It's as if this poem was written for me, about me, to me, and from within me.

It was so motivating, actually, that I did the above illustration, inspired by it, and straight from my butter soul. Here is the poem:

Butter by Andrea Cohen

I’ve never seen the land
of milk and honey, but at

the Iowa State Fair I glimpsed
a cow fashioned of butter.

It lived behind a window
in an icy room, beneath klieg lights.

I filed past as one files
past a casket at a wake.

It was that sad: a butter cow
without a butter calf. Nearby I spied

a butter motorcycle, motorcycle-
sized, a mechanical afterthought

I thought the cow might have liked to ride.
You don’t drive a motorcycle; you ride it.

But not if you’re a butter cow, not
if you’re a butter cow who’s seen, if

not the land of milk and honey, the land
of milk, and dwelled within it.

It had a short life span, the butter cow.
Before it died, I looked

deep into its butter eyes. It saw
my butter soul. I could

have wept, or spread myself,
for nobody, across dry toast.

Comments

[Ruth]

This is great, as soon as I saw the picture I thought of the butter cow. Too bad the lard pig was not mentioned.

[Lori @ Girl Meets Oven]

That is too funny! I'm from Iowa, and I always stop by to visit the butter cow each year at the State Fair. This year, I'll be sure to remember this poem when I do. :)