I like to take out that golden March
morning and hold it warm in both
hands -- I have my daughters to myself,
they have no father, they have all of me.
We drive through the desert,
arrive with the stars, find our cabin,
our beds, and drop into deep sleep.
Peace is jangled at daybreak by
three hundred goats, a chorus of
baritones warming up with the sun.
Lines of does cry out to give up their
milk for thick yoghurt, white butter and
cheese. A boy lifts four newborns up from the
herd; the three who are bleating, kid coats still
wet, he lowers into a nursery of heat lights.
The one who is still and stiff with death
he gently puts into a bag, ties with a string,
and lays high on a rock, safe and silent.
We roam past pens of goats, their cacophony
louder than the milk machines’ purr or the
bark of the dogs or the footsteps of workers who
tend to the flock. Sun well up, the three of us
sit together to sip goat milk and coffee,
feast on chèvre and warm bread.
© Martha E. Snell, 2014
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| Three-day-old kid Photo by 4028mdk09 from Wikimedia Commons |
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