“In the countryside close by there were shepherds out in the fields keeping guard over their sheep during the watches of the night.”
(Luke 2: 8, The New Jerusalem Bible)

So of course “the angel of the Lord”¹
ripped the darkness into Light
as in Let There Be. . . .
Who wouldn’t fall “sore afraid,”

these shepherds fit only for taking turns
on watch in the high country pastures
miles from the civilized town folk
comfortable in their beds,

no thought for bear or lion
slipping into the flock to take at will a lamb,
then the thud of the slingshot stone
between the eyes, the roar cut short,

the crack upon the skull
from the shepherd’s crook, the Aussie
dog’s jaws closing on the beast,
throat fur and skin torn away

to run from these humans smelling of
earth and fire, afraid of no creature
of the Night, these good shepherds–
man and dog–unfit for polite society,

chosen for the “heavenly host”
of angels’ annunciation of Hope–
a “babe wrapped in swaddling clothes,
lying in a manger.”

So, Poet, your wife has told you
Enough Weeping over the death of Lucy,
your red merle Australian Shepherd pal
of twelve-and-a-half years.

You buried her ashes beneath her backyard
rose bush and placed the small stone marker
with her birth and death dates
beside the two-foot-tall statue of Saint Francis

and held a family memorial. Now Katrina
has brought home an eighteen-month-old
black tri Aussie who immediately loved Katrina.
You, four weeks later, Raven is still reserving

opinion, permitting your filling her food
and water bowls and race-walking her on leash
a mile-and-a-half through neighborhood streets and
getting up in the too-early dark of sometimes 3:00,

sometimes 3:30, and now closer to your 4:00 a.m.
meditating and writing time you shared with Lucy.
Raven is holding out hope for you, not for poetry,
but for playing her backyard game of Herd The Sheep,

with you the sheep trying to wander off,
but no matter which direction you take,
she zips across, leaps and spins,
twirling the air like a Dervish

to cut you off and, yes, laugh at your arthritic joints,
your replaced knee, your grinding hip bone,
numbing, tingling feet, then says you may be worth
something after all; let’s do it again!

You tell her the Wolf of Gubbio was docile and grateful
to Saint Francis for gathering him into the folds
of Francis’s earth-brown frock.
Raven replies, “Sheep, you’re no saint.”

Friend, today in Cook Children’s Medical Center,
Fort Worth, children courageous and faithful,
their parents at the bedside, physicians vigilant,
friends back home praying fearless as shepherds,

know anything they ask
in accordance with God’s will,
he hears.²

” . . . for darkness is passing away and the true light
is already shining.”
(1 John 2: 8, The New Jerusalem Bible)

End Notes:
¹Luke 2: 9-14, KJV
²1 John 5:14 (The New Jerusalem Bible)