Mary Had a Little Lamb
I have driven this long winding path into the countryside
not to escape, since the pressures of jobs and deadlines
can never fully disappear. But at the advice of my children
and a courteous travel agent, I find myself loosely following
the suggestions of a paper map, one folded so many times
it would be impossible to fold it up again into the shape it was when I bought it.
After several hours, I stop to stretch my legs, or to capture a memory with my camera.
And I am standing on the next cliff over when I spot you,
a young girl maybe fifteen or twenty, it is difficult to tell at this distance.
Surrounding you are several dozen sheep, most full-grown and ready to be shorn.
It looks like a scene from a nursery rhyme. And it is your utter solitude, so far even from
the road signs I left miles behind, that strikes me with curiosity, or concern.
“What makes a girl tend sheep like this, all alone in these cold northern mountains,”
I ask aloud in a voice that does not carry. But though you could not have heard me,
I imagine you suddenly sensing my presence, as you might sense a wandering wolf.
As I wait for you to turn around and shout some pleasant country greeting
in your native accent, I secure myself behind the warm comfort of my glowing cigarette,
like a downwind hiker admiring a herd of deer.
But of course you do not hear me, you, watcher of sheep,
you guardian of lambs whose coats shine from the side of the cool Irish hillside
like patches of late April snow that dot this genial landscape.
It is as if the whole afternoon were posing for a George Lambert painting,
with the placid forest bathing in the fulvous glow of the sun,
not a breath of wind to disturb a pond’s reflection.
And you, the young shepherdess, you amble along the cobbles,
gently guiding your obedient animals around dry white, old fences
projecting from the layers of folded earth as if they were part of the mountain itself.
Even from far away I can tell that you must be content with the day,
keeping your sheep together, knowing, if only generally, how identical
today is to yesterday. You seem so much at peace with your surroundings.
Not like me, who remember suddenly that the troubles of my return trip
could be compounded if I am lost after nightfall.
I send a last, jealous glance in your direction
as I stamp out the butt of my cigarette and return to my rented automobile,
one of many modern conveniences that make living easier, or so I had been led to believe,
now considering how one could make do without so many machines and appliances.
“I could have been a good shepherd,” I proclaim
from behind the steering wheel, if only to myself.
And I spend the rest of the evening creating in my mind
that alternate self, the other me who lives life on just such a hill, tending sheep
and collecting wood for a fire, who grows a hearty beard to resist the cold night air,
and who has never been to the city, never even learned to drive,
because a small stone hut with a thin curl of chimney smoke
is the place where I would have been born, the place where I would
have all I could ever ask for, and learn all I would ever need to know.
Greg Hill is a poet and short fiction writer in West Hartford, Connecticut. His work has appeared in Six Sentences, Verse-Virtual, Young Ravens Poetry Journal, Barzakh, and other literary journals and anthologies. He and his wife enjoy the struggle of raising three determined feminists.
