inside the steamed windows
of the milk barn,
the milking machines are at work,
steel amidst the animal warmth
of cattle, nipples just washed,
brought in from the field.
I remember the smell of my mother’s milk,
the taste of beginnings
when she was food for another child.
l am a body
grown from nipple,
from when we were
sharers of the same body,
one lost
in the waters of the other.
Milk is the beginning of a journey
that opens into other journeys,
cattle brought in the dark
holds of ships
from other bodies of land,
across waters.
They were hungry,
with angled bones
poking through the darkness
where they stood,
ate, weakened,
their kind would not go on,
and the milk sellers
hoisting up the dying
thirsty cow
too weak to stand,
in leather straps, and milking death,
drinking its watery milk,
eating land,
they were hungry.
At the river one day
the women were washing cloth
blue as the flowing light of milk.
It could have been stolen by water,
carried away, except for the hands that held it.
Something must hold me this way,
and you,
and the thin blue tail of the galaxy,
to keep us from leaving
as life unfolds behind us
over long roads and intricate, human waters.