Poem 319

A few things going on here … the old testament story of Isaac grafted onto a New Zealand farming scene … a lamb was sacrificed in place of Isaac in the bible story, here the farmer or farmer’s son (perhaps the now-grown baby from Poem 141) debates whether to save a lamb or leave it to die … playing God while the real agrarian god of the elements and survival of the fittest is seen in the sun rising through morning fog and the hawk circling somewhere above …

( I like the idea of the mist seen as a dog’s nightmare, a huge intangible unherdable flock of sheep, and the double meaning of cocky god … Leonard Cohen’s song Story Of Isaac is some sort of influence here as well … )

Isaac And The Hawk

The lamb is heavy on your neck
and blood warm
while below in the mist
the long aggressive belch
of the farm bike
tears
           something
frays the cloud line
like the dog's nightmare
                                                  a vast
immovable flock

             you've hoisted the lamb
             across your shoulders
             to feel
                          biblical
             to consider sacrifice
scraps of slimy case
the blue newborn came in
fresh sealed
stiffening in your hair

                                           the ewe
gutty sideways birth
is dead
perhaps this lamb too
and next generation
no breech-birth
perhaps

                  gully fog
                        at your feet
soaking grass and tea tree
                                                       you raise
the skinny exhausted mass
into the sun
                        the dun-coloured
slow winking spiral eye
of the feathered
and split-foot
                           cocky god