The Dead Calf

The Dead Calf

I was in the world just long enough to leave it. 
But brief though my life was, 
The brackets of birth and death still bracket it. 
I was registered on the scale of the earth,
My markings like inlets and archipelagos,
Black or white water, white or black land.
I cried out for my mother. 
Her rough tongue scoured me clean. 
I drank her sweet milk. 
When my legs buckled, I lay underneath her
And when I began to sicken, I sensed her concern. 
The boy came in, a bottle of pink electrolytes
Warm in his hand. 
He’d cut the rubber nipple with a pocketknife 
So it would flow faster. 
He straddled me, forced me to drink. 
Half the bottle went into my lungs.
I died before he could name me.
I was dragged over gravel as if I could no longer feel
And lay in the barnyard until the day
The man they call The Vulture came 
And took me away.
I lay in the back of the truck with the stiffened others.
We whispered to one another
Like people taken hostage.
He tossed us into the quarry,
Covered us with lime.
I want you to know that
I lived, that I was once amongst the living,
If only for the briefest time.