Interstate

 

Milk

The goat comes to me in a dream of families.

I bring her hay and grain and water warmed against

the March air, pull the first, thick, yellow milk

from under her until it flows in hot pints into the pail.

 

…my breasts are swollen. I don’t know how. The baby is frantic

for food and my body will not let down. my son tastes salt in his milk,

hears a new pulse, cries and sucks.

 

Head at her flank, listening to her complicated digestion

move like unfamiliar scales, I bring down the milk: thumb

and forefinger circled at the top of the teat to stop the flow

backward into the udder, sucking down with three fingers

and palm. I squat in the hay of her stall,

listening.

 

…he pushes at me. I give him more. He sings in his sleep.

After the last milk squirts into the pail, there is more.

Nudge the udder. There is more and it is the sweetest

and richest. Strip out the milk and the goat will give more

next time. Strip her dry.

 

… I wake to his need. Crying brings me out of sleep; crying

pulls me out of half-finished dreams. I am reluctant. My milk is sour.

 

It is early. I am milking the goat and looking at the maple

red with spring. It is early. I am nursing the baby and looking out

gray windows. The letters of my name are spelled in milk. Milk

is the perfume I wear.

 

The letters of my name spell a constellation.

No one will set a course by any of its stars.

 

 

Home

At a deepening

of the Isinglass River

I lie down in stones and tea-colored water.

I think: be careful. Do not say

home. The bones

of that word mend slowly.