Mulesing

How many of you
who read these words
Have seen us in the field
Joyously, approaching Spring
With all that it does yield
Those sudden pirouettes we do
The vibrancy we feel
Sentient little souls we are
And everything feels real
The thorns can tear an ear or slice
a nose, and don’t we cry
For pain is pain whatever
As in the grass we lie
Amongst the gorgeous Buttercups
and Daisies, eyes of blue
My coat is thick and fluffy
And the shearer knows this too.

He’s paid not by the hour alas
But by the volume, he
Delivers to the waiting scales
And so it has to be
He carves us up like butter
And our Lesions won’t conjeal
They fester and sleep disappears
It seems they want their meal!
Our tails were hacked off sadly
And the stump has pained me so
They punched a hole right through my ear
And boy wow! it took about a year
They castrated me by using an old bent rusty blade
And I bled for days and I cried for nights
Clearly I had no animal rights
My young life of joy it left and ran
Months of darkness then began
Excruciating that was sure
I have never been so truly sore
I hated men and humans, who left me so bereft
Of all my happy childhood there wasn’t one bit left
The wonderment and rhapsody that I had so felt, I
Still could see the willows and the Buttercups that lie
But inside of me was darkness
all the barefaced lies
Expressions and assertions
When the tiniest lamb dies
In this world of the carnivore
The drama does unfold
This time there are no spotlights
Just a gantry chain so old
and clangy, its so frightening
pegged here now, up side down
And there he stands
the lawless one
a great knife in his hands
He strikes up where I’m hanging from
engaging with my throat
A flash.. A crimson mist cloud hangs
Worthy of some note.