Cock Your Ear. Check Your Barn. It’s March.

Outside ephemera.
Snowflakes on black cat fur,
A faint chuckle from a ewe
carried on the barest whistle
of a March wind.
Did you hear it?

Check the barn, shepherd,
check the barn.

The almost crinkle of ice
forming along the fractal edges
of creek bank?
The imagined shift
of heron feathers on eggs
in the nest?
A paperish rustle of river cane
struggling to hold the line
on eroding silty banks?
Baby barred owls whispering,
dreaming
in nearby cedar?

What did you find, shepherd,
what did you find?

I found:
A rind.
A spent zero.
A whisp.
A scent of nothing skunk.
A whorl of dead chestnut
and desuetude–
our lambing barn.

Cock your ear, shepherd,
cock your ear.
All of you.
Listen with all of you.