Moving the Cows

(or, How to Dilute Dreary Reality)

It’s not just humans who can benefit from VR. Moscow-area farmers strapped modified VR headsets to cows to see if it improved their mood—and, of course, their milk production. —Engadget

An Alpine pasture strapped against their eyes,
they beam with joviality, they’re merry,
less moo-dy—udderly helpful for a dairy.
They do not seem to mind the frenzied flies.
They do not seem to miss their former meadow
though grasses do not grow in this cow ghetto.

A viridescent panoramic vista
of rolling hills and rills and songbird trills,
buttercups, daisies, clovers—all this fills
their senses, minds, and hearts. Does there exist a
heaven like that? Unfasten the technology,
and you would owe those cattle an apology

since, in their crowded shed, they’d smell the silage,
ears drenched in the din of sundry milk machines.
The sight of virile bulls in pleasing scenes,
however, is enough to cause milk spillage
inside this world of make-believe normality
where bovines browse in virtual rurality.

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(Appeared in Lighten Up Online.)