Dosing Calves c 1968 by Edward Denniston – The Milk House
Heat and steamy breath from big-eyed young calves
crammed into the stone outhouse, sentient, persistent
in this old loft of a head. Light-shafts land in,
push through window slats, striking backbones,
rumps, a startled gaze. Amongst them,
in the press of bellies and ribs, each head
braced by another’s rump, pushed across withers,
me, Minotaur in reverse, wading chest-deep
in a tide of spine and hide. Smells cling:
dusty hay in the manger, nervy spasm of
body-warm piss and skitter. The churchy smell
of lime mortar, dreeping walls.
The smell of human. I sooth-talk the calves
to a taut, helpless calm, squeeze myself between them:
there’s jostle, shove, skin-ripple, lustrous eyes,
quick snorts from mucus-wet nostrils –
a kind of pleading. Am alive now to the task –
neck-wrestle, pincer of thumb and forefinger,
a jaw relaxing, prised open for the tapered dosing bottle.
On each haunch, a dusting of lice powder. Seems
this wee topper of a worker will never let you forget
how he dosed those young calves in that stone outhouse;
has nothing to say about a hope, or how he was, in himself,
sauntering down the chestnut-tree laneway, home.
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Learn more about Edward on the Contributors’ page.
Edward’s latest collection, Vital, was published by Compost Poetry and is available here.
(Photo: Martin Stewart/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)
The 2025 Best in Rural Writing Contest is now underway!
$500 first prize, $200 runner-up. $10 entry fee. Finalists will be published in the 2026 Best in Rural Writing print anthology.
Accepting fiction and nonfiction under 7,000 words. To enter, click here.
Deadline: September 15th, 2025
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