EARLY ON

Once they get their legs to travel
and explore apart from mother,
left at the babysitter’s with fresh

calf licked clean asleep, they center
at the water trough waiting for the udder
off grazing to return. Every morning’s

‘buck and run’, opposing blind sprints
before they learn how to stop
only to circle back to where they began.

Always the stealer, head marked with manure,
waiting for the young cow’s calf to suck
before approaching from the rear—

a dance of patience and insistence
in a great green ballroom that becomes them—
it takes a herd to raise a calf.