Jane Newkirk

Breach

“On many commercial dairy farms, it is routine practice to separate the calf from the dam within 24 h of calving. Proponents of early separation consider it economically beneficial (due to an increase in saleable milk) and ethically preferable (as it is thought to preclude formation of a maternal bond that becomes progressively more difficult to break.)”       

                                                       —The Journal of Dairy Science

The Farm

Because this work is who I am
and cannot be stolen
by storms or months-long fury
of sun or the sudden loss
of crops or cattle,
because this work is a ritual
of doing and undoing,
I know my place among the fields 

like I know my wife.
Some days she lingers
at the sink, the faucet running,
running, while she surveys from the window
her field of sadness curving
over the far hill and away,
the way I read each wrinkle 

of earth, divining
the mood of the soil, its want
for warmth or rain,
or track a blemish of clouds
across the sky's perfect pane
and the summer’s sojourn
in the pasture's slow paling.

The Nameless Child 

We carry her, still.
And on her first day,
she was still. 

The nurses bore her through their urgent rituals,
probing and gathering
data, numbers, values. 

How your mother bellowed from the bed
for days.

The Steal 

She had labored long, the calf a breech,
and stood for hours licking it clean
of birth and nudged it to its feet. 

I hefted it to my shoulders
as you would a sleeping child,
claiming the calf the way one claims

the warm weight of suffering as his own.

The Undoing 

She came at me like thunder,
a rumble of heat and hooves.
The thud of her body felled me,
her fury rapid, divine.
Mouthful of mud. A thrashing. 

From the house, a dropped pan clattered.
Slam of a screen door. A howl

carried over the hill.

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Jane Newkirk’s poems have appeared in The Night Heron Barks, the Journal of the American Medical Association and Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine. She is editor of Medmic, an online journal for healthcare-related conversations and creative expression. IG: janenewkirk_writer