Tuesday Poem: previously published by Melusine in Summer of 2009

Moonlight Calving

They say those who begin under 
moonlight, give the richest milk.

A cow lies down in the field when it's her time.

You're summoned out of warm bed

into the damp, the clover underfoot.

The shepherds were drawn by a star,

but here in these rolling fields,

all silvered and shadowed,

you've come because you can't sleep.

There are no choirs singing.

All you hear is the lowing of one in need of relief.

You will be her annunciation, her benediction

as you reach up inside her and pull as hard as you can.

****

But the writer worries.

Who cares that they have to be yanked out?

And it hurts, goddamn it,

that she's full of a rage

she knows no one wants to hear about.

It's messier than she ever could have imagined.

Don't look away in embarrassment, though.

She delivers, she does eventually.

As she cleans it up, you'll see,

the thing will develop a presence.

This tender scaffolding of words

still too wobbly to stand,

curls on the moonlit page

fresh from its difficult birth,

****

For the sake of argument

why not say it is also effortless:

akin to Jell-O setting if Jell-O suddenly set and came alive.

One minute there is moonlight.

Well, we call it light, but really it is nothing

even remotely resembling true light:

the white of sunlight with its hidden waves of color.

This is light reflected from a body curving toward another body.

An ethereal whiteness

slowly solidifies in a field,

comes alive as a newborn calf

bleating for its mother,

and we feel the milk of its yearning,
thrill to its nudge and nuzzle.

Tuesday Poem: previously published by Salt Hill Journal in 1990 and Caprice in 1992

Cow Crossing

Each one is a black and white newsreel,

an ache of bones undulating,

a moan against gravity.

Big as cars, they

lurch across the road,

rumble and bellow, eyes bulging

at the boy who shoos them barnward,

as chased and clucked toward milking

they go, placing one dainty hoof

in front of another, careful as two

tightrope walkers, encased in a cow suit,

afraid of falling.

All go except the one

who turns her dark face away from the rest,

flicks her tail at the boy,

at his calls and whistles,

as if he were just a big fly.

She wants to stay lost

in the apples and timothy of the pasture forever.

She twitches and shoulders the air,

sweeping away the stone walls,

the stanchions and hungry machines,

with her slow head.

The stuff in her velvet bag

will clot and curdle

if he doesn't coax her out soon.

What can she do?

Caught, she lows to him softly.