Spring, spring, sounds like daffodils and leaping lambs
but it smells like shit,
and straw,
and blood,
and also,
it really sounds a bit like a bleeding barrage of bleating,
mooing,
snuffling,
and grunting.
To that soundtrack the shepherd rises, to check the cams and set off driving,
through the twinkling morning to midwife the ewes, who pant and paw, and curl their lips into snarls, and find themselves pinned, as the process of birth
nears it's end, and God Only knows what they are thinking, as a hand reaches
inside and grips the slick hooves of their lamb and
pulls
life
into the world.
*
*
*
I wrote this a while back, whilst Spring was still springing and wasn’t just early-Summer, as it seems to be now. I went lambing for the first time, and fully participated. I was quite engrossed and a little enamoured with the brilliant messiness of it all, and so I scribbled a little something which I have cleaned up, and reformatted, to share.
