Calf
She’s up against her mother’s legs
sucking milk. She’s walking the pasture
just barely steady in deep grass.
Look at her black reflective eyes—
you can see the fence wires there,
a line stretched across her sight.
There’s her mother back the other way,
swaying to the sounds that cows move to.
She hears it and shakes her head to toss
the flies away. She’s got a tail to do it, too,
and her mother’s tongue will clean her
of the sticky milk that brings the flies to her.
When she’s back against her mother,
she’s got to move the way her mother does,
the way all cows do, and then, from here,
you can see her eyes are closed and
she’s not seeing any more than you or I
would pressed up so close to one another.