The Dairy Farm Remembered

Past the bamboo grove behind New Railway Village

my pals and I used to jump the fence

that kept the bull from the cows.

We’d bunch around the dairyman

and hear the milk chirr into the pail.

Once, outside the wire,

we stung the bull with slingshots—

when it bellowed, the dairyman

chased us off, but we watched

from the bamboo while a calf,

steaming hot, slipped free of its mother’s body

and stood up. We saw

it was a male, and males

were killed at birth. When the bright blade

slid into its throat and out,

blood gushed,

covering the earth like a carpet.