Song for Some Women

Thanks so much to Mia Savant for sharing my poem "Song for Some Women" on her Online Open Mic today! You can read the poem here.

You: A Poetry/Prose Hybrid by Liz Samuels

Although we haven't met in person for a year, my amazing students still inspire, delight and astonish each other each week by exploring their creative depths online.

Thank you to Liz Samuels for sharing this piece that pulses with all the scents and sounds and sights of life.

You

by Liz Samuels

A week later, but with the remnants of Valentine love lingering in the Willamette Valley, mist blankets fields of grass, sunbeams emerge, tiny droplets sparkle turquoise, lavender and chartreuse, and I get to spend this day with you.

 

I don perfect attire for mid February,

deep pocketed jeans and

Pendleton plaid shirt, sheepskin vest and

waders with soles meant for clinging to mud.

I can't take my eyes off your rounded belly as I twist the lid off a cumbersome thermos of steel, pour a stream of hot coffee from its tower, into it,

then take one quick gulp of that steaming brew.

As the air fills with the richness of fresh roasted beans,

I rub dry, eyes. Purple vessels protrude beneath them after a sleepless night.

The barn is cold but bearable and I only shiver a little.

Dim light gives way to sun beginning to show its face. A rooster crows.

 

The first time you gave birth

you feared you might drown in that swollen river,

didn't know what to make of it.

Make that both of us.

Now we float on its waves

though ready for that unexpected curve.

 

You

have given us babies

most of your life,

only lost a few,

one, a tiny triplet too weak to live

though his two siblings wobbled, then grew.

As I watch you, I am hopeful

the straw beneath you feels soft

and my

words soothe.

 

The cock crows an encore, past the break of dawn,

and at that moment

I see the hoof of a lamb, blood and goo

ooze out of your bright pink opening.

It's a black one, the opposite color of you.

You, oblivious some humans

have given black sheep an unwarranted rap,

you push it all the way out. Then comes another, this one the light of day marbled with midnight splotch

 

That seems to be the extent of it.

 

Your two little lambs coated in licorice down snuggle against your white chocolate wool,

nuzzle their way to the sweet smell of colostrum,

latch on to the pointed teats of your engorged sacs and the suckling begins.

You are an old hand at this.

 

Now rain drenches the grass. So does the sun.

How many more years will I be right here

to relish this time by your side

and you, ewe, bring your little lambs

into the warm arms of winter ending?

A rainbow arches across gray tinted blue, to me a sign these births will not be our last, that you will continue to provide cheese, milk, wool and lamb. On this day I give you my promise that I will do my best not to gouge you with clippers when I shear you, that your blood will not spill, on my watch, that I'll try not to mind when you almost knock me over when you rub up against me with the weight of your body, eager for that bucket of fodder. Today I promise to think of you every day as divine, for to me on this day there is only one ewe.

About the author: 

In the summer of 1983, Liz lived on a small farm halfway between Mt. Hood and Portland where she and her husband took care of besides small animals, two forceful and friendly sheep that would often almost knock her over. The first of three children was born the following spring. Thirty-seven years later, they spend their empty nest years living on a floating home on the Columbia in Portland where they're responsible for watching other people's sailboats. Liz began writing for fun in the last few years. Her other passions are singing anything and African dancing.