Milking A Cow

"If an actor knows how to milk a cow, I always know it will not be difficult to be in business with him." Herzog has also previously claimed that when he walks into a room, he can tell who there has previously had hand to udder. Or, at the very least, would. "I can tell from miles away, yes," he confirms. "Woody Allen is not ever going to milk a cow."
~ A GQ Interview with Werner Hertzog

is more difficult than you might think. Like driving a car. I remember being very surprised the first time I drove a car, that you do not simply press the gas, continuously and with the same level of pressure, to go and press the break, continuously and with the same level of pressure, to stop. It came as a shock that you must be attentive to both the break and the gas pedals, pressing and releasing each often --- but equally often you must do so quite lightly, hardly at all. I remember being surprised that the car would continue to move forward when I was not pressing the gas pedal, and that it might slow and slow to a stop without applying pressure to the breaks.

You do not simply pull on a cow's teat. It is more a matter of manipulating the udder in such a way as to pull the milk down through the teat and into your pail. It is not like tugging on a thick bell-pull to call the servants. It is more like massaging the hand of a friend in trouble. Like pulling a friend in trouble away from a fence-line along a cliff's edge --- with compassion, but also with determination. It will feel as if you are doing something to relieve the cow, to help her. But instead, it is something you are doing to help yourself and your family. Voila! Milk!

A Vignette

Two black people were shouting, jolly
in the street. A white man came outside
asking questions, worried there was a fight.

The two black people exchanged a look. One said, "No.
We just talkin'. Everything's alright."

Without regret

Distrustful of such happiness, I thought
to break a window out of our small room and soon
had bloodied both my arms, had cut and caught
my wrists on shards, sharp shrapnel of a ruin-
ation I would try --- did try, and failed to fly or flee. Then you,
you, painstaking, reframed each single pane and turned
and asked me how the light looked then, and left
me still a moment, looking at the sky. My arms both burned
when you took me into yours. (I felt your heft.)
You showed me where the door had always been
and offered to undo the locks, unpry
the hinges that we two had closed together, painted over, sealed.
A brief whiteness passed the window: I turned to you.
Other things have yet to make me stay
like well-marked exits do.

A room with no egress---

or egrets either. An exitless,
regretless room where we regrew, reknew
uncertain innocence together: then ever
gregarious anew,
we both expressed unprepossess
ing love, unpressed. And who
could have guessed that we-with-no-egress, we two
still could be (with all we knew!) egregious
ly without distress---and also with
out egrets.

Still our arms link: A Perfect Plagiarism #2

Perfectly plagiarized from Sappho's "And their feet move"

Still, our arms link

fiercely, as freckled

arms of younger boys

linked then against the

current of time, parting

a circle in the strong

white-flowing water

Coming Down the Stairs: A Perfect Plagiarism #1

Perfectly plagiarized from "Walking Beside a Creek" by Ted Kooser

Coming down the stairs

at daybreak, the still house

filling with light,

you can feel the great joy

of the rooms, their skirts

flung out like dancing girls,

the sunlight streaming

through their wide, white aprons.

vice versa

Casting swine before pearls is also mistaken:

for all their shine,

pearls have no use for bacon.