Marjorie Moorhead
Ovine
We were sheep.
Your wool felt good against mine.
Close proximity. Moving as a clump
of warm breath spongy thick-coats. Followers.
A flock of followers; we went where directed.
Together; en masse.
Didn’t realize what happened at the periphery
of our group. How it was being trimmed.
The ones on the outside, the un-able,
falling off by the wayside.
The directors knew this. They kept us
moving grazing feeding sleeping.
They grew fat, living off our herd,
shearing off the undesirable. And we
didn’t even know. We just kept moving.
Grazing feeding sleeping.
Marjorie Moorhead is the author of Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in HIV Here & Now, Rising Phoenix Review, and Sheila-Na-Gig Online, as well as in several anthologies. Her poem “Taking a Knee” will appear in The Poetry Box’s Poeming Pigeon Sports issue in Spring 2019. Also forthcoming is a collection with her group, 4th Friday Poets (Hobblebush). Moorhead writes from the NH/VT border.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.