Shepherding Facts

35 years of tending sheep.
Sixty tons of lamb.
Pasture is flesh and flesh is grass.
Woolgathering in the margins
on cold-dark new moon midnights in winter,
hunting with Orion.
Lambing jugs and pugged up pasture.
“Ovie, ovie, ovie!” sung
to the resonant chorus of hills and hollers.
Rotating through the same ecliptic
every year
moving miles of fence.
We are tough.
We are completely defenseless.
No one considers this art,
but it is.
We sculpt fertility and the future
one moment at a time.