Jody padumachitta Goch
All the Kids Want to Work in the City
I feel like I’ve worked since Jesus was born
the back forty are done and dusted
the cows herded to another pasture
the boarded horses stalled
the tractor’s oil changed
the silage stacked
But then there’s the old cow calving for her last time
And it’s midnight and she’s still struggling
And my hand it numb from helping her
And I wonder if it’s time to let them both go.
But she’s my favorite, black with a white strip down her back
I called her Lucky because she was born the same day as my second born son
who to this day has never quite forgiven me for staying home for the birth of a calf.
But I tell him, his momma had doctors and nurses and a clean hospital bed,
Lucky’s mom only had me and a straw covered floor,
Today my first son left for college.
Today my wife drove into town.
Today my second son works beside me, silent,
holding the cow’s head while I try to pull the calf
when it’s done and the calf lies there not breathing,
he cries as he cleans the bull calf’s nose,
thumps on its sides until as a gift for his hard work
the calf huffs a breath of forgiveness.
It’s three in the morning when we turn for the house.
Milking starts at four, so I’ll have a coffee
read the almanac, I’m just settling in my chair
when my son pops his head around the corner
‘anymore coffee?’
and sits down not asking if I want company.
Almost
(Growing Up in the 70s)
Curling is big in Canada,
throwing those big ass stones down the ice,
sweeping with a broom while the captain
yells some kind of signals,
most of us just ignore. Really the whole idea is to make
things crack when they hit each other,
A general roar and reason to toast with
good Canuck beer,
Most of us learnt pretty young how to step slide
how to run on the ice, to edge around
the danger of falling on elbows,
Sometimes we played it on lakes,
with the boom of the ice shifting
under our weight, the weird knowledge
that we were perched on trouble,
or when the rocks got boring
skating with a hockey stick, through bulrushes
the bump of uneven freeze traveling up our legs,
Even in figure skates we held those sticks,
blade down or the whole thing held horizontal across
our bodies, almost like it would save us from adulthood.
If we stayed long enough out there in the frozen north,
that the rest of the world would
leave us alone,
Vietnam and Kent state and the family down the road with the
kids and the crying wife, a man nicknamed ‘Dodgeball’
would become just another snowman in the field,
that we could stay above the 49th parallel
pretend we were the best hockey players in the world
And one time my best friend almost got
a bullseye in curling,
Then we became adults,
and she didn’t play anymore.
Tomboy Dare
Try this just once, it won’t hurt you,
but it did, electric fences in the summer rain
and barefoot. These two things don’t mix well.
Just touch this, just once, you can do it, and I did
—25 and my tongue still hates gate latches.
My older brothers loved to dare me.
I tried damn near everything they did,
including my older brother’s girlfriend, touching her
lips with my fingertips, feeling the electric zing.
Don’t touch that my father yelled pulling me away.
I was nine but that first try at softness
still haunts me, and metal gates aren’t the only
things I am afraid to handle.
Jody Goch is a Canadian living in the German Black Forest. They write, chop wood, and ride horses. Jody’s jeans and shirt pockets are full of stories. It’s hell on the wash machine. They enjoy lighting the wood stove and rescuing words from the lint catcher. Jody has stories and or poetry in Wild Word, Com Lit, 50 Word Stories, Co-Op Poetry, Rise-Up, Does It Have Pockets and a short story in Strasbourg Short Stories 2021.
