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.
Thank you, Austin. This is lovely. Surely it will change my experience the next time I encounter death on a farm.
Heartbreaking and beautiful. This one really moves me. Thank you.