I can't understand why I can't understand

I think I did it three, four times, at least—sneak out, ride 

with boys in a truck to a farm, hop the fence with our flashlights 

and Coors while small frogs fled the machetes of our feet, 

crash through grass to where the Holsteins clustered, slumbered,

grass-breathed, milk-eyed, high as my shoulder, weighing a ton

and worth a grand: they'd topple with a single, bracing shove.

The yoke of their shoulders thundered the ground

and we'd feel it through our feet as we ran, whooping, 

me nearly wetting my pants with adrenaline and fear—

those cows could toss me like a sack of trash, snap my bones

like balsa, though mostly what they did was roll to their stomachs,

shake their stupid heads, unfold their forelegs, heave-ho to their feet.

By then we'd be racing home, taking curves so fast 

we'd slam against the doorframe, turn up the Springsteen,

me on some guy's knees, dew-slick, grass etched—

another pair of white Keds ruined—check me out, puffing Kurt's

menthol Marlboro although I didn't smoke. Cough cough.

I could end this by saying how I ran with the boys and the bulls

and no one ever harmed me. I was a virgin then, stayed that way

for years, though I wore Victoria's Secret beneath my uniform skirt.

And no one ever harmed me. But I'm lifting off in a half-empty plane

which clears a field of cows, the meek, long-suffering cows,

and from this heightened window I can't understand

why I can't understand why whole countries hate our country.

Because of our bemused affection for our youthful cruelties.

Because the smug postprandial of nostalgia coats the tongue.

Somehow, despite planes clearing fields of cows and flying

into buildings full of red-blooded Americans, it's still so hard

to accept that people who've never seen me would like to see me

dead, and you as well. Our fat babies. Our spoiled dogs.

And I, a girl at thirty-two, who likes to think she was a rebel, who lifts

like a crystal in this tender recollection every few years to the bright window

of her consciousness, or lobs it into a party for a laugh—Cow tipping?

I've done that—who brags (isn't it a brag?) that no harm

ever came to her—what would they make of me, the terrorists

and terrified? Wouldn't they agree I've got it coming?

[Beth Ann Fennelly {1971- } 'Cow Tipping', from Unmentionables]