Friday Poem: "The Eleven O'Clock Show"

Yallingup Sheep Station, Western Australia

To herd the muster of fifty gray sheep—

a stumble-tide that runs and stops and bleats

in forceful monosyllables—

the Kelpie, a cinnamon-colored dog,

leaps on their backs, paws careful,

the way he would cross a shallow rapid

on wet stones: snouting back and forth,

cloud-stepping,

until the hindmost sheep enters the gate.

The grazier assures us that he will never bite,

never bark. All he wants to do

is walk on sheep, he says.  Brown dog's been bred this way.

Then the sheep have been funneled

into their orderly row, the shearing shed

a shadowy gape at the end.

The dog dismounts, curls

by the fencepost worn smooth as a river stone,

polished by the fifty thousand woolly bellies

crowding by year after year.

This is a working station, he says.  This is how it is.

All we have added is a bench for tourists,

a gift shop, a gravel carpark.

We turn from the fence, from its humming electric wire.

We snap our pictures, bag our trinkets,

climb back aboard the bus in a slow, quiet trickle,

never discussing what we might have been bred to want.

This poem appeared in Ceriph No. 3.