Sheep

On an unexpected encounter one pre-dawn February morning

Fragments is a thread where I post small poems and thoughts that seem to need to be shared.

Photo by Luke Ellis-Craven on Unsplash

Sheep

I turn the corner of the house

and the air jumps.

A sound I’m used to, but not here,

not in the semi-concrete soundscape of the village.

My mind takes a moment to connect.

I stand and listen and, recovered from their surprise,

the sheep listen too.

The sound is the tugging and grinding of grass as they eat,

a sound I’ve heard so often on the walks of my earlier life

and in our Irish field overlooking the West Cork seas.

Here, it brings the fresh air of the hills

to the smallness of the village

and tugs at something in me

that longs to be free.

As the sheep trot away up the middle of the road

they take a little of me with them,

and I remember the life I have put to one side,

the one where I wake up to open skies,

the one where silence wraps around me

and then I can hear sheep munch,

birds whirl,

frost snap.

The life where I can hear

my own thoughts growing roots

and unfurling as they reach upwards,

to their fruition.