O the joyous wonder of this sunlit morning
to watch new spring calves cavorting together
sprinting across the dirt yard, tails held high,
playing tag between their mooing mamas and
stopping suddenly for a warm satisfying nip.
O the awe-full agony in that moonless night
to see a cow laboring to birth a calf turned wrong
coming with back feet first, needing human help in
pulling out with hope a live calf, followed by horror
of bloody uterus and desperate heaving to push it inside.
Next day, wife asks, “How’s the calf?” and farmer answers,
“Lonesome…with no one to lick him off.”
a poem in my pocket 