Sheep Evening
Liz Minette
When my sister and I
cannot sit any longer
in our aunt and uncle’s
house with its living room
triptych of garishly painted
clowns displayed evenly
above an old cathode tv set
that is never turned on,
and cannot listen
any longer to the
adult discussion
of who died this
year and how close
to home they were
when it happened,
and are freaked out
by the massive beetle
that scuttles across
the pea green carpet
to hide under a clutter
of farm magazines and
Ladies’ Home Journals,
we jump in, the lull
in adult conversation,
to ask if we may
go outside?
As we descend
the blue painted
wooden porch,
where our aunt
keeps a tin of
wet cat food,
(that we like
to press our
fingers into),
on a matching
blue painted
wooden bench
for any mama cat
nursing in the barn,
and before the
screen door slaps
shut, one of the
adults shouts
“Leave the sheep
alone girls!”
Flame cheeked for
being admonished
in front of everybody,
my sister and I go
silent into the early
evening, find
an abandoned
wooden trough
with grass growing
up through it.
Paws, a little
fur leg shoot
up through
the grass.
Two kittens
play hide and
seek with us,
the trough’s tube,
which sits decaying
right next to the
paddock enclosing
the ram.
Through the tight slats
we see the ram
barely move his head.
But he is watching.
The ewes and
lambs, who have
been out in the
field, are moving
in the now dusk
along the barbed
fence line, safely
coming home.