On the wall in front of my desk this picture hangs along with others from sheep shearing. I enjoy looking at it; this is a job I remember doing. The man stomping down the fleeces is one of Mary's relatives and is the only one I've ever found of someone doing this. A couple years back I wrote this poem to remember:
Sheep Shearing Time
A man holding a clattering shears
straddles an upended ewe
and bends to strip away
the thick robe of wool
she wore through the cold.
Lambs separated from penned mothers
bleat, hungry, lonesome tunes.
Clouds of dust hang
above the milling flock
where a helper
enters to catch and drag
another animal to her shearing.
"Good sheep shearers can do
a hundred head a day,"
goes the dinner table talk,
and this flock of sixty
will be shorn by mid-afternoon.
The boy feels drawn to enter
this grown man's world
and wants to tie and throw fleeces
into the hanging wool sack
and climb in to pack the bundles
so that by the end of the day
the boots he wears,
soaked lanolin soft
from the wool's drenching oil,
bring him another step closer.
