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 woman
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.