Like a moth and her lamplight, this little one 
looks for a bosom. Before he could 
barely stand on his own, legs trembling 

like saplings in a storm, his mouth motions
toward his momma. A mandible on a muzzle 
smelling for the scent of home. Just minutes ago, 

his snout, with nostrils pulsing awake, 
emerged with small front hoofs, followed by 
the rest of him, pushed out of her — 

slick, lithesome, whole. I held him, my arms
instantly stiffening into a poor man’s palanquin. 
My heart softened like sunrise, tears brimming 

in the corners where blood and light meet. 
Was I just witness to a meaning of life? 
This is the closest I will come to being 

a mother. Holding a breathing body dependent 
on another breathing body. His warmth, the closest 
thing to touching a star. My own body dependent 

on modern medicine to survive. She called out to him, 
her first born, this wonder of a creature, so alive, 
so daring. His first cry, an assertion to matter

in this world. When do we lose our way 
from the wild? His cloven feet find ground 
for his first forage, mother’s manna, 

colostrum to flourish. She bathes him 
with her tongue, unearthing fur 
fine as the powder of moth wings. 

He struggles to latch.
I struggle to help him. 
Two animals trying to thrive.


First appeared in Women of Appalachia Project’s Women Speak, Volume 7