Not even the corrugated fields,
the well water and Sunday dinner,
could prepare a green college girl
to be left alone to labor:

the closeness of furrow and farrow
when a great sow began to grunt
under heatlamps, to heave like lava,
dropping piglets till only the runt,

dark and reluctant, remained,
coiled beneath her tail. She rocked
the boards with her weight and began
sinking to sit. I panicked.

Not even the corrugated fields,
the well water and Sunday dinner,
could prepare a green college girl
to be left alone to labor:

the closeness of furrow and farrow
when a great sow began to grunt
under heatlamps, to heave like lava,
dropping piglets till only the runt,

dark and reluctant, remained,
coiled beneath her tail. She rocked
the boards with her weight and began
sinking to sit. I panicked.

But slapping her bristled haunch
was like slapping a mountain;
I found myself bound to reach
beneath, feel for that pig, half-in,

half-out of a world with too much use
for him. But I wasn't thinking,
Pigs are smart. Common sense
wiped his fluttering nose clean

and chafed his skin: slippery life
will have warmth and light. And nothing
would have surprised that new midwife
more than the news: Pigs eat their kin,

though she saw blood marking the hand
she carefully wiped on her dress
and silos holding yellowed seasons
in spires of indelicate mesh.