End game?

 

I’m tired now. My body aches, and I feel at least seventy years old, and it’s late. My breasts are too hot, and my feet are too cold, and I can clearly remember everything that ever went wrong in my life. There is a whisper that all that lies ahead is misery.

When this started, at first, I was wrapped up in a golden glow. Everything seemed possible. Every wrong could be righted, and I thought with joy of the struggle to climb ever nearer and near the true fullness of life. The impossible was merely in invigorating challenge; the hungry fed, the little people come to their own.

And now it is night, and I ache, and even the perfectly possible seems too much of a struggle. Somewhere a voice is whispering that I have chosen a path which will break my heart. A voice is whispering I should turn back, as far as I can.

So what do the whispers think I am? All right, I’m tired, I’m down, and maybe I will never see what I dreamt of come true. But I tell you now that I’m getting up, and going on and seeing this through. Come on, give me a hand.

The flocks

 

 

So, this bloke, this townie, says: ‘and how did you know they were your two ewes when you found them in old Sam’s flock?’  Well, you can’t say what springs to mind can you?  I mean he wasn’t to know better, I suppose, and ‘how do you find your bum with both hands?’ well,  it wasn’t going to help.  So I just said: ‘Well each sheep is different, isn’t it?  Each face?  And the body and the way the tail hangs.  But more than that, they didn’t look right at home in Sam’s flock – and of course when I called, they looked straight up and at me.’

Well, of course they did.  My sheep. 

Awkward little sods, sheep.  If they do go missing it is always in vile weather – too hot, too cold, the first really wet day for months.  And then they are always looking for an opportunity to die – get stuck, get tangled up, hurl themselves of a bit of rock,  anything will do.  And then they are always needing something – feet sorted, wool off, fed, something.  Endless ruddy work. 

But just call, and they will follow.  My sheep just follow me.  The hardest thing I need to do, each year, is to decide which animals go for cull.  Each year, we breed a few more than we need.  For the good of the flock, you need to pick out which are to go – to die.  Sacrificed, you might say.  One or two actually are, of course, sacrificed.  But each one that goes, it’s a sacrifice to make the rest stronger, healthier.  Poor ruddy sheep.

Wisedom

The sun is bleeding to death behind the mountains, but I am walking from it. Ahead, in the dark sky to the east, there is a star, first among equals.

When I began this journey, I was full of certainty; burdened by a sense of who I was, what I sought. I’ve travelled a long way since then, and the beauty of the half light has sunk into me. Listen, the harsh joyful cry of the heron. Look, seed heads of the dying plantain. I have learned to walk when I was too tired to sit upright, to welcome a bed neither clean nor soft. Harder than that, I learned to give away what I felt I myself needed to those who had more than me. I found I there was little I needed, and much they did..

I used to fear the dark of true night, when the moon herself is put out. Now the path itself has taken hold of me. Seeing or not seeing, it is always there.

The end? Yes, I walk and hope. There will be an end. I had thought of it as judgement, as praise and punishment. I had thought of it as glory and rejection. Now I think I would like to hold a child in my arms. At the end, a child to cradle and to cradle me.