The Black-Faced SheepRuminant pillows! Gregarious soft boulders!
If one of you found a gap in a stone wall,
the rest of you—rams, ewes, bucks, wethers, lambs;
mothers and daughters, old grandfather-father,
cousins and aunts, small bleating sons—
followed onward, stupid
as sheep, wherever
your leader’s sheep-brain wandered to.
My grandfather spent all day searching the valley
and edges of Ragged Mountain,
calling “Ke-day!” as if he brought you salt,
“Ke-day! Ke-day!”
* * *
When the shirt wore out, and darns in the woolen
shirt needed darning,
a woman in a white collar
cut the shirt into strips and braided it,
as she braided her hair every morning.
In a hundred years
the knees of her great-granddaughter
crawled on a rug made from the wool of sheep
whose bones were mud,
like the bones of the woman, who stares
from an oval in the parlor.
* * *
I forked the brambly hay down to you
in nineteen-fifty. I delved my hands deep
in the winter grass of your hair.
When the shearer cut to your nakedness in April
and you dropped black eyes in shame,
hiding in barnyard corners, unable to hide,
I brought grain to raise your spirits,
and ten thousand years
wound us through pasture and hayfield together,
threads of us woven
together, three hundred generations
from Africa’s hills to New Hampshire’s.
* * *
You were not shrewd like the pig.
You were not strong like the horse.
You were not brave like the rooster.
Yet none of the others looked like a lump of granite
that grew hair,
and none of the others
carried white fleece as soft as dandelion seed
around a black face,
and none of them sang such a flat and sociable song.
* * *
Now the black-faced sheep have wandered and will not return,
even if I should search the valleys
and call “Ke-day,” as if I brought them salt.
Now the railroad draws
a line of rust through the valley. Birch, pine, and maple
lean from cellarholes
and cover the dead pastures of Ragged Mountain
except where machines make snow
and cables pull money up hill, to slide back down.
* * *
At South Danbury Church twelve of us sit—
cousins and aunts, sons—
where the great-grandfathers of the forty-acre farms
filled every pew.
I look out the window at summer places,
at Boston lawyers’ houses
with swimming pools cunningly added to cowsheds,
and we read an old poem aloud, about Israel’s sheep,
old lumps of wool, and we read
that the rich farmer, though he names his farm for himself,
takes nothing into his grave;
that even if people praise us, because we are successful,
we will go under the ground
to meet our ancestors collected there in the darkness;
that we are all of us sheep, and death is our shepherd,
and we die as the animals die.
Thinking Small: The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle by Andrea Hiott
St. Patrick's Day in the United States is a day to celebrate Irish heritage. There are many traditions, the simplest of which is wearing green on March 17th. On the Irish flag, the green portion represents the native population of Ireland who are mostly Catholic. The shamrock, of course, was a way St. Patrick taught the people of Ireland about the Trinity. Three, and yet, One. Saint Patrick's Day symbolism is tied up with Roman Catholicism in a way that some people may not realize.
I just added a new resource to my Lenten Resources page. Blue Eyed Ennis points us to 24-7 Prayer which is an interdenominational movement of prayer, mission and justice out of England. They post something every day of Lent. You can subscribe to this on iTunes, or get it via the blog, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. The videos are about 5 minutes each and there is also a free guide you can download.
I just read that the Little Sisters of the Poor have said that the HHS mandate "Threatens to end our service to the elderly in America." 
