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When cows were blue, I could snuggle in my father's lap.  He'd stroke my hair and I was very happy.  The rough stiff faded green of his paratrooper fatigues against my cheek.     His voice booming through his body and into my ear pressed against him.  His big hands.  I was the puppy, jammed up warm and safe against my dad, the US Army.  He'd blast his marching  music; it carried him to pride and tears.

I clung to him as he sang with  his comrades; he was right there with them.   They'd sing of the soldier who forgot to hook up.  Blood on the risers.  "Poor son of a bitch,"  my father declared,  who jumped out to the sky, spiraling screaming speeding down, slamming into the earth.  I watched that man over and over, from my nest, as he plummeted.  Stoic to splattered red.  

And so death had introduced itself.

I turned inward and closed my eyes.  I fell asleep in my father's lap and watched the cows as they began to lose their blue.

MOO 

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