In the Kingdom of the Ditch

The Consolation of Wind

11 The Consolation of Wind In the barn, as she helps her husband, her belly bumps against the worn wood of stanchions, the warm sides of cows whose udders are tugged by rubber and metal, whose milk runs the length of the barn in a maze of plumbing. She is tired and her back aches. She uses fistfuls of bag balm to ease the skin’s stretching, child kicking her insides as she shovels manure and hoses the dairy parlor’s slick gutters. Like Perpetua who was gored by a bull only to become the patron saint of cows, this woman is grateful for the neglected beauty of bovine: fullness of breast, width and curve of haunch, the strength of sloped shoulders, the heavy eyes that watch for the consolation of wind as it rubs the limbs of lilac and dogwood. For Craig Blietz ...