I Am Full of Milk and Walking

Nancy Huggett

Down Florence St. past trees and cars 

and neighbours’ cats. Let out in sunshine, 

jaunty almost. Untethered for a moment.

Breasts brimming sustenance,

fortitude, love. Like the liver and onions 

my mother fed me when I cried 

last night after feeding my daughter,

hormones frantic, figuring out their flow.

Mothers know. Liver. Milk. A lick of spit

To make things right.

I stride,

eyes bright from sleepless nights

and this thin slice of freedom

until the call from up the scaffolding—

the bark and whistle of the brawn

looking down at me, all full

and round and ripe. 

Affronted, 

I pull up short.

“I am a mother!”

I shout into the clouds of steel. 

A mother! Proclaiming 

the new order of things.

Then march along, sure 

of having put them 

in their place. As mine 

has changed and so my view 

of every little thing.