Watching
the Milk Cows
by Sandra Adelmund
This is Michael Carey for Voices
from the Prairie a weekly sampling from the rich soil of Iowa’s literary
tradition. Today’s author is Sandra Adelmund who for so long hailed from
the Cedar Rapids area and was poetry editor for Iowa Woman, helping young female
writers find confidence and maybe their first audience. Although she has recently
moved to the Minneapolis area as you can see from her poem, Iowa and her rural
past is still very much with her. Her poem is entitled "Watching the Milk
Cows." Growing up on a farm in rural Iowa, to some, cows couldn’t
help but bring back memories of innocence, nature and childhood. In part, this
poem is about how we need those early memories now as much as those in our memories
maybe needed us way back when – even though we may have physically grown
away from or abandoned the original place that engendered them.
Watching the Milk Cows
It’s probably vain
we watch them
thinking how much
we’re needed, how little
our houses mean when compared
to warm straw and lantern light.
We remember our rural beginnings:
how streets were graveled – not paved
how the errant cow – routed by flood waters –
carries with it into daybreak some secret country
we once called home. How long into the
night we’ll dream them, soft and full
of milk, cooing to us, chewing their cuds,
so much trust in their eyes
it makes us squirm.
"Watching the Milk Cows"
by Sandra Adelmund was first published in Voices on the Prairie by Loess
Hills Books.
For Voices from the Prairie and Humanities Iowa, this is Michael Carey hoping you continue to hear the music blooming all around you.
Biography
Sandra Adelmund taught and lived in Iowa until 1995. She is the former Poetry Editor of Iowa Woman, and the former Assistant Editor of Short Story. Presently, she teaches at Calvin Academy and the Loft in Minneapolis. She has won the Iowa Pen Women Award, the Minnesota Voices Project Poetry Competition, the Hearst Award and has been a finalist in numerous national competitions. Currently, she is hard at work writing novels, one of which is well on the way to being finished.