How the heart is opened by the followed flock…
how all effort ends with the simple clink of gate clasp,
the rusted grate of hung gate swung free.
And she… how she so smoothly rocks and rises,
from her dark night of rest and rumination,
to stand so still…
so still…
until finally pouring forth from the confines of her fold.
And though her tiny cloven feet first broadly cleave
the raw earth of the gathering ground, they so quickly close
to etch only narrow trails for the lost to follow…

perhaps only the lost may follow…

For being neither straight nor sharply bent,
these trails–to the many–make so little sense;
but carved in curves like the earth itself,
they sway upon hillock, then descend within swale.
Trails: weaving through woodland of fir and broadleaf maple,
winding around the very edge of wetland,
and rushing out in wild radiant spokes through rusted holes
in rickety wire fences.
Some split by hawthorn thicket may later merge behind.
But those torn by girth of great oak… or single thorn of thistle…
may remain forever rent as curves of one birth in unending divergence…

Imagine now yourself as the lost…
on this landscape of trails…
this criss upon cross…
unable to choose…

realizing - at last–life not yours left to lose.

How the ends of all trails at once then appear.
Along all of your wanderings, she was always so near:
her dark round droppings glistened in the new born sun;
her stark grey ribs–though quickly stripped -
were so slowly dissolved to soil;
and white wisps of her wind blown wool were snagged
amid tangles of grass and tiny twigs… these were poems…
poems of the one Flock unfolding now upon lush pasture before you…
the one Mother whose splendid udder rocks pendulous
with the rhythm of her proud walk,
her pregnant round body almost bursting with full-term twins:
whose lips already pucker with the urge to nurse,
whose ears as well so eagerly await the tender summons
of their mother
to suckle…

This trust… this knowing: in ovum re-ignited each fall
by single ember glowing from journey heroic…
from journey heroic…
and then… then such surrender…
as this sacred messenger slowly dissolves–
before her round walls–
his all that was…
his all that was… and never will be again.
But the message, the message–now aflame–passes through…
the flame melts through her layers of lipid that
immediately allow no others.
For this message - now arriving - rekindles,
with fair maiden no longer resting,
the ritual dance reserved for true lovers… Yes…        

                …Molecules of DNA dance!…

stretching and intertwining, condensing and realigning…
this mystical dance divining the wisdom within Who is:
the guiding grace of when and where which who will be!

       Oh, how I love those whose dance moves me!

Gift of ancestor blessing unborn, helical link of loved with lovelorn,
   and earth with sky, Thou and I, cell with cell, heaven and hell:
              All is One… One is All… and All is grass:

    Blade love-laden upon the soft altar of Her lips.