Wool
An ancient love of mine. Sheep are so abundant with giving. Their fleece soft & sticky,
smelling of decaying leaves mixed with the breath of heather & bracken.
Musty & pungent with lanolin. Oily and tacky. Heavy and robust
before the dung and the twigs and tiny creatures
who have made their homes in this smelly bundle
have been melted and loosened by tepid, suddy water.
I want to squeeze & tease the fibres impatient to have it clean.
I have to curb my hands,
compulsive to scrub,
to have it all freed.
So many ruined in this way, too much agitation, too much need for what it is not.
The secret is to soak gently, to allow time, to coax if anything, better still,
to go away & come back before the water has turned a stony cold.
Extremes are not good. Interference is not good. Patience & trust works well!
I hear the wind blow between the cobwebbed fibres, stretched out like gauze.
The sound of birds sing across the empty spaces now shawn and free.
The spiky burr & barbed thistle still cling tight and I prize them out
like the determined wrapped fingers of a newborn.
I am pricked like 'sleeping beauty'
I suck hard and my thumb tastes salty and rancid, my lip curls & I spit across the back of my hand.
How I love nature, the earth, the brown and the rotting.
The young shoots, the nibbling grazers and these sheep who give of every fibre they have.
Eyes like marbles, ears pierced rough with borrowed earrings,
ruddy colours stamped with ownership in puddles on their backs.
They watch & huddle, cluster together, anxious and tip toeing.
The shearers hand swift and bold, a nip here and a slice of red there
but all is done now,
scattered back, exposed into the flock,
bare, skin and bony like camels startled.
Unburdened by oily dampness, catching barbed on fence and hedge.
free to wander through cool air slipping. Unfettered. fleece forsaken but grateful -
Both you and me.
