The Taste of a Dairy Barn

Since we have been fighting

my stage four liver and pancreatic cancer,

and I say we, because I am not in it alone,

but since we started the chemo,

every time I wake up I have a taste

in my mouth, not pleasant not awful, either.

It always takes me back to being about

five or six, following my brother

from the feed room in the milking barn

where grandpa kept the pelletized food

that Hazel, the nice longsuffering black women

who milked the cows would shake a bucket out

 in front of each cow when she locked their heads

in the  wooden escutcheons.

After she hooked up the milkers,

she would wash the concrete floor

with a high pressure hose  towards the drains,

before and after the first and last cow,

she poured bleach on every thing

and hosed it all out.

You might not care about this

I do, because we would as small boys

run barefoot through the pelletized food in the toughs,

avoiding the big wooly heads of the cows.

Hazel would tell us to be careful to not frighten

the cows and put them off their milk.

I was always more worried about them

taking a bite out of me, but of course

 that never happened.

What did happen was I have forever

etched into my memory the smell

of cattle urine, bleach, fresh milk

and the pellitzed food, and that is

the smell or taste I have when I wake