WEBVTT

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This is about the
point of a reading

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when I like to wake people up.

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This is going back to I
suppose the purported abuses

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of my youth.

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My father's family
used to run sheep

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over the mountains
of central Utah.

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And I came into the
room one day to overhear

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my father reminiscing
with a friend of his about

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the good old days when
they used to castrate sheep

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with their teeth,
which is I guess,

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cleaner and faster,
less equipment.

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And who can say all
the reasons that they

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might have done such things.

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I know that these newfangled
devices that they use now

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do not carry much truck
with the old guard.

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So that process is
called marking the Lambs,

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and so is this poem.

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So this is a pick me up.

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Marking the Lambs.

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"As crickets
geiger-up for spring,

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we corral the ram lambs.

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They stutter and dense
against the fence,

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wheezing for the ewes.

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Down wince, down retch, up one
and flip his back to mud, knee

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to sternum.

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The banded tail will black
to wizen, prune off easy.

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But marking is all trespass.

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Thumb the soft belly
to pop the scrotum out,

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then lunge and
turn the mind away.

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Teeth working, working
to snap back and spit.

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I try not to taste but I am
all mouth, all salt, blood

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and lanolin.

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I hear their bleatings
through my tongue.

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They call it marking for the
tooth-scars on the belly.

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But when I speak tonight, my
words will sputter and decay.

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And when try to say your name,
I will pronounce it elegy."

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