Lesley Quayle
is the co-editor of Aireings Poetry Magazine, based in Leeds, Yorkshire, UK, has been published widely in UK, work read out on BBC Radio and local radio, folk and blues singer, wife, mother, sheep farmer.
The Final Loading
"Away."
The old dog flies.
A last perfect outrun.
Circles, wide and low, behind the ewes;
a tight lift, half on his belly, wired to the whistle.
The flock mother pitches into the raw wind,
towing her cargo of followers from the quick eyes,
sure-footed through the bog, with its tang of heather
and the sidling dog, working them, rhythm for rhythm.
Balancing them, pace on pace, holding them to the man
who waits, still as flint, in the valley's lair.
They are poured down the mossy hide of the scarp,
rolled like stones into the holding pen
where the wagons are marshaled,
ready for the final loading.
The man, rooted muscle and bone in the barbarous hills,
hangs his back on the rungs of wind,
strides away from the last gallery of his life,
the shouldering ewes packed in tiers,
with never a look behind. The winter day swings shut
above him. Shadows embrace the stiff lines of pain.
The old dog lies patient, kennelled by loyalty,
rises like a wolf to the snap of the barrel and the final loading.
God is as close as the descending sky,
in the crook of a finger which burns on the trigger.
Two shots.
Sheaves of birds soar,
assemble on the wind in curious mourning.
