#3
between the age of ten
and seventeeni milked our jersey
every day
(she gave two buckets
in the morning slightly less
at night)we called her beauty
i’d take her for a half-mile walk
in the morningstake her out among the
high rich grass
near jonson’s wellpick her up in the evening
after schoolgreen grass makes the milk rich
mama saidin the spring there was usually a calf
which I would try to hoist in my arms
every morning
every eveningbelieving what I’d read somewhere
that if you did it that way every day
there’d never come a time you couldn’t
heft itbullshit (as I learned)
in the mornings I churned butter
in a glass jar(grandmother had the real thing)
in the evenings we made ice cream
on the lawn
talking quietly
slapping at gnats on our armsone day I left the top off the barrel
of branbeauty ate too much and drank
swelled up and diedearlier they tired to make her retch
with a greased rag
but it was uselesscows got no sense
daddy said