#117 Has Her Calf

COW
In the western grasslands of Larimer County
southeast of Bobcat Mountain, #117 struggles
upright under darkness of a rainy spring night.
Eleven hundred pounds of her black angus body
all but disappear into an invisible presence licking
blood-streaked mucus from her newborn calf.
The wind worries her with rumor of coyote.
She twirls a long tongue over her nostrils
and steps around her calf like a ballet dancer.
He must learn to stand soon and suck on her teat
to release the afterbirth hanging as an iridescent
cord of slime down from her rump.
Only then will she rest.

CALF
The bull calf inhales a sharp wind and shivers
from the first drops of cold rain on his fresh skin.
He recoils from the hard, unforgiving ground.
He buckles and wobbles, flails his limbs
like an unstrung, tangled marionette,
and collapses into a womb curl, submitting
to the long tongue that tickles his hide,
to the being that nuzzles his flanks
and shoves him over and over in the grass.
He stares up into fierce, snorting nostrils,
the spring rain misting into his own.
He’s supposed to do something soon, but what?

COYOTE
Concealed in the darkness, a lone coyote
lies in a shallow depression of locoweed and sandstone.
His keen senses have detected the birth, and though
his belly is filled with prairie dog, he can’t resist
waiting to see what might happen. He’s no match
for the angus cow, but her calf is another story.
No calf has ever been born that can match his sprint,
his spring, his jaws. He is, after all, Coyote!
He grows weary of waiting, yelps to let them know
he knows, and trots off toward Slab Canyon Wash,
melding into the rainy spring night.

COWBOY
After a day spent arguing with barbed wire,
cleaning out the horse barn, overhauling his tractor,
and digging out irrigation ditches while snowmelt runs
down through the Cache La Poudre Watershed,
the cowboy sits deep in his armchair, scuffed-up boots
on the coffee table, a pair of glasses sliding down his nose.
He hears the coyote yelp and springs for his battered
1947 International with the rusted-out doors.
He finds #117 in his headlights and climbs out
to inspect her calf. A good omen, this sturdy new calf,
this slow-soaking rain. Maybe there will be enough hay
to keep them both through the winter. Maybe now
with a calf to consider, #117 will quit jumping
over the barbed-wire fence. Maybe.