Wallow

..Being a poem about an Indonesian bullfight.

1.

On the way to the bull fight the driver pauses by a paddy with a water buffalo and a bent farmer, muddy to the knee, whose straw hat allows him to shed the rain and our roadside attention; as the driver leans on his horn and inches forward the water buffalo cocks an ear at our noise, lifts a foot out of the muck, shifts its weight, then sets the hoof down.

As we find the road’s wet treads, its switchbacks and horn blasts, the day-trip leader turns in his seat and rubs his brown hands up and down his muscled belly.

And as he warns us to guard our vital information instead of our vitals, several of the daytrippers mimic him, touching their stomachs to make sure the sweat-stained papers, the wads of cash that make them loosen our clothes in public, feeling for the ridges of the right bill when we want to eat, drink, lay our bags down.

And as the bus comes to a stop, not at an arena but at the base of a grassy hill, he carefully smiles at each of us, and I see that he already knows who will most need him.

2.

The day trip leader picks his way up the hill, his sneakered feet sure on the foot path through the grasses and stones.

He stops three-quarters of the way up, and is slowly encircled; he notes which of us are already breathing hard, which ones are hiking with hands on bellies, full-term tourists, and waits until the last swaying camera comes to rest on the last chest before he speaks:

You can stay on the hill or go down onto the plain with the bulls.

A cheery middle-aged Brit asks what he would recommend; he smiles again and waggles his fingers near his head: You should stay on the hill.

Once at the top, we can see the plain, all the men moving behind the water buffalo; they thresh their heads and their penises flop pink against their grey hides.

As I start to walk down the other side of the hill, my hip pouch rattles around my waist and when you shout after me, asking where I am going, I say down.

3.

And the bulls fight among trainers who poke their muddy humped rumps, yelping to add to the juice, the magic that inhabits them, among wizened men who pinch hand-made cigarettes between long fingers and boys who goose handfuls of betting money, hopping from foot to foot over the hoof-broken ground.

The bulls sidle backwards, meet and part, bleeding now and the men try to get behind them, their teeth and eyes flashing in the falling dark as they shout out their bets.

And their eyes are on both me and the bulls as I mimic them mimicking the bulls.

And it isn’t long until one buffalo, its eyes wide, its hairy chin outthrust, chases the other out of this mass of men and then, as if it has held the magic too long, tosses its horns and follows.

4.

On the way down the hill, the day-trip leader grins wide and indulgent over our chatter, as if to say:

No one else could have given you this!

You laugh with the rest of them on the way down the hill but stare out the window, subdued, when people ask me what it was like, shaking their heads at my daring.

And as the adrenaline of the day drains away, the daytrippers watch the flicker show of memory where bulls charge and part, charge and part; content to dream no further than supper and sleep, the day done, the day yet to come.

In the dark, you scowl all the way into childhood, seeing the bulls, their blood and bulk but also the back of my head as I walked away.