Giles Goodland
Milk
The farm was near enough to hear
the murderous squeal of pig-feeding
each morning, and the farmer’s wife
whistling in code. Two blasts and he’d
chug back on his tractor for breakfast;
three blasts for the phone, always
left ringing until he came, and four
for if a pig had broken loose.
She wouldn’t miss a sparrow landing.
I didn’t know the word agoraphobic,
I only knew what I heard dad say,
that she’d only leave that farmhouse
feet first. Mum said it was like
being afraid of drowning in air.
At the end of the walk up the hill
I could see her across the flowerless
garden, inertly drifting from window
to window with an unacknowledging
fish stare diffracted through misty light
and with her eyes on my back
I’d unlatch the gate and ride it open
floating in slow motion to try not
to rouse their dog, which each morning
would whip the chain to choking-point
and bawl its anger across the scrubbed yard.
Mum said it was because of the puppies,
each year after whelping, the farmer
would drown them in the waterbutt.
She strained towards me as if I was the one,
as I dipped the ladle into the churn,
breathed the sour lactic smell, and in
four blue-white sloshes filled my tin pail
and bolted home before the school bus
pulled up at our corner. I often thought,
in those seconds with my back turned,
that I would hear the scream of one
whistle-blast, and it would mean
look out, boy, the dog’s broken its chain.
Page(s) 103
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