Season of lambs
 

This is the season of lambs. Fields come alive
with a tottering delicacy, whose skips and spurts
enliven my daily walks.

The white van that motors slowly through the fields
is their large white god,
with its muted baaing –

their provider, bringer of hay,
calculator of calendars,
solicitous, officious,

with everything worked out to the hundredth,
like a sexton walking the grounds.

Vivid imagery reminds me of William Blake. The anapests in the first three lines highlight the skipping and cavorting of the lambs and contrasts with the slow progress of the van’s spondees.
(Yes, I know it’s non-metrical. I can’t help it.). The reference to the calendar and the image of the sexton turns the idyllic field full of sheep into a church graveyard and reminds us that the lambs will soon be turned into tasty entreés.
I suppose one could do a Blakean exegesis and read this as an allegory of industrialization vs. agrarianism, but I prefer to read it as being about a country dweller who notices the encroachment of modern, impersonal farming techniques on his enjoyment of natural beauty.
Nice work.
Glenn

I like it, David. The opening line is just right. A little bit of John Clare in 2024.

Hi David,

I enjoyed this. Though I have a couple of wonderings.

I wonder about "come alive" and "enliven" sharing the first S. At first I though maybe "come alive" might be the one to go, since it's a bit of a stock phrase, but then I thought, actually, the reference to birth plays nicely off the impending death of the "tottering delicacy", where delicacy suggests, perhaps, a nice meal of roast lamb. So maybe there's an alternative to "enliven"?

In the last S, I wonder a little about how the sexton connects. Maybe the it's just the van driving around that's likened to a sexton walking the grounds, but what's in between seems part of the simile, and the calendar calculations and the precision, and the things being worked out to the hundredth has me wondering. Maybe, I'm missing a reference (not sure I've ever met a sexton), but is there a connection between sextons, calculations and precision? I guess he rings he bells for services, which entails a degree of good time-keeping.

best,

Matt

Oh dear. I loved the “tottering delicacy,” but David’s walk has taken such a dark turn that I can’t join him now without hearing “Silence of the Lambs.”

I wondered whether there is a kind of pun going on here with "sextant". A precise navigation instrument, but more likely to give measurements in minutes and seconds of arc than "hundredths". Its use in determining solstices would also fit in with "calculator of calendars".

I liked the "solicitous, officious" line.

I wondered about the white van moving through the fields. More likely in my experience to be a quad bike. Not sure vans would venture off the track and over the fields.?

The involvement of the sexton does give it a nice, somewhat sinister, religious connection.

In a single sentence, you tell us that the white van is a "large white god" but is also "like a sexton." Either metaphor is fine, but having them both together in a single sentence feels rather cluttered and contradictory.

I wonder why the emphasis on the van being white. You use the word "white" twice in close proximity. It almost feels like you are trying to make a racial point, perhaps a comment on colonialization, but I don't think that's your intention. Why must the van be white?

I think you could omit "solicitous, officious" without missing them. The words don't add much and are more of a comment than an observation.

In the last line, maybe replace "walking". Maybe "prowling" or "pacing"? The poem starts with "my daily walks" so maybe you need something a bit different at the end for the sexton.

I figured the van was white because, being the lamb's god, it was made in their image, so to speak. The van is like a great sheep/lamb, and sheep/lambs are white. The comparison of van to sheep/lambs being made stronger by the van baa-ing.

David –
I read this several times, enjoying it a bit more with each reading. It seems to me to be a comment on the way that lives move from spontaneity to measured order.

You might consider removing the first “white” in S2.

The shift in focus from the sheep to the fields in S3 seemed a bit abrupt to me

It was interesting to see reference to sextons and “hundredth” in S4, but I felt it was making reference to “hundreds”, a classic measurement of land area in the time when everyone knew what a sexton was, namely a groundskeeper (and gravedigger) at a church.

All in all, I feel this has promise.

JB

Hi Glenn. Nice to "meet" you. I think you're pretty much right in your reading of it. I am a country dweller - grew up on a farm, in fact - so I enjoy the lambs, but can't ignore the nagging thought of what most likely awaits them.

Thanks for the John Clare reference, John. Much appreciated.

Thanks Matt. You are characteristically on the button. I had not noticed the overlapping "come alive" and "enliven", so I should do something about that.

Ah, the sexton. The simple definition appears to be "a person who looks after a church and churchyard, typically acting as bell-ringer and gravedigger". It was the gravedigger aspect I was thinking of, but the bell-ringer appeals too, now I think of it.

And the hundredth is that calculation about the lost sheep from (I now see) Matthew's gospel: “How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?”

But there's also a less caring actuarial element to it too. Coldly calculated.

Sorry Carl, but it's true - the silence of the lambs is often how it ends. But they get a while to skip and spurt in the sun for a season or two. (Oh bugger, I just made myself think of Terry Jacks.)

The sextant idea is ingenious, Joe, but not what I had in mind. Perhaps I could do something with it, though. And it is, in fact, the white van of an elderly gentleman farmer. No quad bikes for him - not yet, anyway.

Hi Roger-Bob. Thanks for that. I think I'm okay with the large white god and the sexton, but I will run it under the microscope (or rather wonky magnifying glass) again.

"Why must the van be white" is a question for the elderly gentleman farmer, but I am alarmed to find I've used the word twice. I will do something about that - as I will about your other comments. Very helpful.

And thank you, John. You have spotted the double "white" too, which is more than I managed. Let me think about S3.

Cheers all

David