Poem

They travel in twos like Mormons.
Silver tankers
Chilled and loaded;
Labeled in big red letters
Like children’s toys.

Where do they come from?
I have not seen a cow in weeks;
Only the red desert
and a horizon of dry breasts.

If we have trucks like these
In Goshen, I cannot see them.
Milk seeps into the city;
They could pump it in
Through the sewer for all I know.

But here, where the earth is barren
And the sky a blank page,
Milk travels like the gospel:
A glorious diesel tract.

Jennifer Halteman Schrock attends Berkey Avenue Mennonite Fellowship in Goshen, Ind.