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A Shepherd's Keep

Any 'shepherd's" work
must be
quotidien.
It must
reflect memory
into the future
back into
the present,
echolocating
the now
from:

a sniff and taste of amniotic fluids
on the wind,

the quickbleat from
a lamb one second old,

the anxious scrapes of a nesting ewe

or the unblinking, cud chewing faraway inward look of a soon mama.

A shepherd's promise
is to keep
it quiet
as it's kept
paying it forward
with the
whole
sensorium.

#smallpoems