Running with the Bulls

No throngs of spectators lining the streets. 

No streets!  Gravel driveway to gravel road 

and a single participant, sober as a farm boy can be, 

in tenuous balance over rutted pasture, 

fulcrum of five-gallon buckets 

of finely-ground milo 

in the midst of a couple dozen mixed-breed bulls, 

a fraction of the 150-head herd 

Dad rented for stud to local farmers 

long before lust became artificial, insemination robotic. 

Adolescent thoughts elsewhere, 

this one’s body dumped grain mechanically 

into the long trough, trance broken only 

by the thud of thunderous skulls crashing, 

3,600 pounds of Hereford and Angus, 

heads bowed in the most primal of prayers. 

They were on me in a heartbeat, 

hooves churning, kicking up a whirlwind. 

I dropped buckets and ran, sinew straining 

to fulfill instinct’s command, 

train rumble and Johnny Cash bellow in my ears, 

reverberating in my bones, 

flanks and hide of the combatants hard 

against my arched back, our animal flesh 

seemingly synchronized, 

yet one stumble and I’d be under 

those heavy hooves. 

4,700 miles from Pamplona, 

I burst into the clear, muscles twitching, 

synapses crackling like fireworks. 

No cheers rang out from compatriots, 

no compadres bore witness to my brush, 

yet I can assure you, the celebration was no less intense, 

elation and ecstasy lifting me onto their shoulders. 

BOYD BAUMAN grew up on a small ranch south of Bern, Kansas, his dad the storyteller and mom the family scribe. His books of poetry are Cleave and Scheherazade Plays the Chestnut Tree Café, and his children’s book is The Heights of Love. After stints in New York, Colorado, Alaska, Japan, and Vietnam, Boyd now is a librarian and writer in Kansas City.  Visit at boydbauman.weebly.com.