bigger (12/17/82)
Scott Bigger 57 lines
203 West Fowler Ave. #2
West Lafayette, IN 47906
9-29-82
Remembering lambing
(in difference to D. H. Lawrence)
I recall now
many years later
that the lambs
never
flowered
the daisy flecked meadows.
Instead
they would come when the
long drifting snow
had teeth
for the fast cooling flesh in the
hard corrals howl.
Four o'clock moonglow and
crystalline winds
(that poured over skin like thin water)
would find Dad
and sometimes
the rest of us
collecting nickel lambs
like children in a scramble.
There they would lie,
guarded by black-faced, black-mooded ewes
(murmuring weak warning
and
drinking from young),
the wet, shiny lambs
still wobbling, still steaming black.
Trying to keep slimy bodies in hand
we tripped back
to the barn
where eyeglasses steamed
carrot coaxing the muddled mother
with lambs;
she'd bawl loudly in long, hoarse sobs
'till both were left shaking
on bright yellow straw.
And still sometimes
they'd drown
in their first startled gasp
or slowly succumb
gauging dark winter
in cold corral corners
(and at breakfast
Dad scribbled
'round bacon-egg stains
the expense of the lamb
we'd missed frozen to night)
never
to dot
like pretty weeds
the grass of far green spring.