Sister

When he roots in, open mouthed for latching, his cheeks smack my breasts
and his belly settles fat at my chest.
I am Hathor in motion, my nipples his new world umbilical.

The pump-time, pump-time, pump-time demand of my electric breastpump
churns out some distant relation of the milk that flows to his touch.

I bottle my breastmilk and leave it with him in the arms of my neighbour, Angela.
I drive to work, meeting a farmer hunting cattle on the way. ‘Get up the yard, ya bitch,’
he bellows at a round cow stopping to take a shit.

Her tail spatters shit around the road. My sister cow, separated from her newborn
calf, bays into the bleak. Clouds struggle through the March sky.