Nature scribes her poetry upon the hills in sheep.
Each off-white syllable, senseless by itself,
when gathered into groups can shape a thought;
a couplet here, and there a line alone,
creation incomplete upon the pastured hill
before the March gales blow them flocking to the sheltered quoins
of dry-stone walls where, clustered in pentameters, they lie
or graze in stanzas by the hawthorn hedges, biding time.

Pregnant with the embryos of Nature’s new ideas,
they’re waiting patiently till creativity explodes
as March gives way to April, when quite quietly emerge
their pristine progeny to punctuate the grey-fleeced verse
with diamond-spangled periods cocooned in bright, white wool
that later sort their parents in parentheses upon the hill.

Watch them, older now grown bolder, gambolling in sentences;
see semi colons overleap their peers, high-hurdling Olympic style,
while frisky commas, tails vibrating at the teat,
define each clause or point up some dramatic pause
till, tiring of creation’s puzzle, fall asleep, slight bodies curled
in queries coiled, their questioning curtailed.

In June, with poetry completed on the crowded hills,
are gathered up the verses to the shearing sheds
and shepherds’ call to collie dogs: “Come by!”
They make their play, their lay across the ley: “Away!
Lie down!” or “That’ll do!”  While separated from their new-weaned lambs,
the milling ewes now penned, that learnt their lines by rote,
bleat recitations of that yearly recreated rhyme
that Nature scribes upon the hills in sheep,