This is about the point of a reading
when I like to wake people up.
This is going back to I suppose the purported abuses
of my youth.
My father's family used to run sheep
over the mountains of central Utah.
And I came into the room one day to overhear
my father reminiscing with a friend of his about
the good old days when they used to castrate sheep
with their teeth, which is I guess,
cleaner and faster, less equipment.
And who can say all the reasons that they
might have done such things.
I know that these newfangled devices that they use now
do not carry much truck with the old guard.
So that process is called marking the Lambs,
and so is this poem.
So this is a pick me up.
Marking the Lambs.
"As crickets geiger-up for spring,
we corral the ram lambs.
They stutter and dense against the fence,
wheezing for the ewes.
Down wince, down retch, up one and flip his back to mud, knee
to sternum.
The banded tail will black to wizen, prune off easy.
But marking is all trespass.
Thumb the soft belly to pop the scrotum out,
then lunge and turn the mind away.
Teeth working, working to snap back and spit.
I try not to taste but I am all mouth, all salt, blood
and lanolin.
I hear their bleatings through my tongue.
They call it marking for the tooth-scars on the belly.
But when I speak tonight, my words will sputter and decay.
And when try to say your name, I will pronounce it elegy."