Saturday's Poem: Heifer Calving

cattle

HEIFER CALVING by Robert Isaacson

It is 2:00 a.m.

when Sally wakes me:

“The heifer is calving.

Get up!”I peer from deep sleep

at a screaming

bare ceiling light bulb:

”God damn it!

Why can’t she do it

on her own?"

And then I remember:

the last one, bred too young

by mistake,

to the big Hereford bull.

We pull on boots,

tall rubber ones,

and hike out

into the black, winter night

down the steep road

to the muddy  corral.

We have

one flashlight.

It flickers

in the frosty air.

Thoughtless, in a tee shirt,I grow cold.

My sleep warmth

steams off  me.

“I am too old

for this shit,”

I whine to no one,

to the dark.

I think

of my friends

in suburban beds,

friends

who will wake

in a few hours, warm,

to burbling

automated coffee machines.

The flashlight flickers:all goes black.

I am

51 years old,

in the dark,

chasing

a god damn heifer

with a big

calf leg

sticking straight out of her,

running

in circles,

knee deep

in sucking mud,

fermented , rotting barley hay,

steaming shit.

We are all blind,

and she will not go

through the gate.

The light flashes on again.

Its pale beam

punctures the darkness,

and the heifer

sees the gate,

runs through,

plunges down

the long, black lane

to the Teco squeeze.

In pitch darkness,

we stumble after her,

slamming the metal gates

as we go,

yelling pointless

orders to one another.

We leap over

the crowding pen walls.

I curse and scream

for light, somehow

catch her,

bawling,

mouth foaming,

in the head gate.

We get behind her:

the single leg

ominous, wrong,

her rear end obscene,

distended from pushing.

Sally sticks her arm in,

feeling

into the strange warmth

for the other leg.

The light

goes out,

comes on again.

We curse each other,

the heifer,

ourselves.

Sally loops a chain

above the hoof.

Together we pull,

leaning nearly to the ground,

again,

again,

and again.

The heifer bellows.

The light goes out,

comes on again.

Sally reaches in

and chains

the inside foot.

We hook the come along.

I crank

the winch.

Nothing happens.

Then movement, a mouth,

with long tongue

hanging dully,

glazed eyes,

and hunched shoulders.

It hangs up on its hips,

suspended like a frozen diver,

slimy, steaming

in the freezing  air.

The heifer

bellows,

bull-like,

shudders,

starts to collapse

in the chute.

The winch out of cable,

we pull by hand,

sliding in the mud,

falling together

to the ground.

The calf slides

out at last,

headlong

into life.

Light-headed,

amazed,we drag it

floundering

into the corral.

We release

the staggering mother

from the head gate.

Arm in arm,

we walk home,

laughing loudly

into the blackness,

the moonless night.

Above us,

a billion winter stars.

Frost is forming.

A weary heifer

licks her curled calf dry.