The Uncanny Shepherdess (a poem)

The confluence of lambing season and a strange, vivid, favorite poem from my youth had me picking up my pen not long after dawn this morning.

Lambing season is nearly upon us here in the far North. If you live in an agrarian community, you know the feeling: preparation, anticipation, excitement…and also, sometimes, a little cinder of fear. The miracle of ruminant life doesn’t always come without costs. May none of us have to face them alone.

We don’t own any ruminants at the moment (though that will be changing soon-ish) but if you have owned ruminants or even have good friends who do, the season nonetheless gives you a feeling. It’s similar to the feeling I get as a former teacher when the ends and beginnings of each semester roll around, almost like a phantom limb but in calendar form. This year, having no creatures of our own that give live birth or need shearing, I’ll be helping some friends with shearing, and perhaps with lambing.

So, what does this have to do with the poem?

Yesterday, I happened upon a favorite old poem from my youth: "The Cremation of Sam McGee"¹ by the late Canadian-British poet Robert W. Service. Of course, I savored its macabre, clever, humorous words a few times over; it’s like Southern Gothic humor, but make it Yukon. And then, while I was asleep, my brain made some strange fusion of Sam McGee + the aura of lambing season. When I woke up, my brain was full of it in a way that I normally only feel when I see a painting in my head before starting to make it. It just sort of spilled out of me in unpolished poetic form, and it had me picking up my pencil not long after dawn this morning. I hope you can forgive its rough-hewn-ness…I haven’t sat on it and refined it (which I’ll likely do). Instead, I wanted to share it straightaway, as-is.

So, here it is. Working title: “The Uncanny Shepherdess”.

There is a shepherdess down the road a ways.
She is known for her two-headed lambs
and six-toed barn cats,
but not for her beauty.

Among the frost, in the dark of a lambing night
she is singing a song
that the cold carries to my ear,
three firelit houses away.

It is a ward against pain,
a balm against fear,
a thanks to the winter,
a come-hither glance and sly smile for spring.

In her way, she already knows
what she will bring into the barn dark
in just a moment,
a quick, pale moment -
any
moment
now.

In the womb-quiet of deep winter,
anticipation’s quickening footsteps
beat between your heart and ears
as you hold your breath, waiting.

But the shepherdess breathes.
She inhales lanolin and hay, woodsmoke and ice.
She exhales fog, resolution, and her last cinder of fear.
It is this way every year.

The bleating sheep breathe with her between heaves,
the barn a’din.
Then, almost suddenly, the quiet tucks back in,
your ears ringing in the frigid fulldark.

A blanket then, to cover and care for the lamb
whose four eyes look at us - waiting for nothing in particular -
as its faces are licked by the six-toed barn cat.

Thanks so much for reading. Wishing you all a happy Wednesday, a good March, and a delightfully uneventful upcoming lambing season.

Warmly,
Jack

1. You can read “The Cremation of Sam McGee” here.