Counting Sheep, and: The Blackbirds, and: The Hired Mourner

Counting Sheep

Counting sheep, the scientists suggested, may simply be too boring to do for very long, while images of a soothing shoreline . . . are engrossing enough to concentrate on.

—The New York Times

When I reacha thousandI start to noticehow the eyesof one ewe are wide,as if with worryabout her lambor how coldthe flock will beafter the shearing.At a thousand fiftyI notice a rampushing up against

a soft and curly female,and for a momentI'm distracted by errantimages of sex.It is difficultto keep so many sheepin line for counting—they are not a paradebut more like a roilingsea of whitecaps,which makes me thinkof the shore—of all those boringgrains of sandto keep track ofas they slipthrough the fingers,of all the dangersof sunstroke,riptide, jellyfish.The scientists fallasleep lulledby equations,by dreamsof experiments,and I fall asleepat last bycounting them:biologists andphysicists,astronomers,geneticists,and all the many expertson the subjectof sleep.

The Blackbirds

I can only call it postpost modern-this music

let loose by the blackbirdsas they swarm south

abandoning trees—those leafy songbooks—

like individual notesgone mad.

And the woods ringwith the first sounds

of autumn, raucousand dark,

before a singleleaf has changed.

The Hired Mourner

To hired mourners grief is good . . .

—The San Diego Tribune

She sits beside the coffinas they did in ancientGreece and Rome,keeping the body company,keeping each shudderingcandle flame alight, guardingthe portal between this lifeand something else.

She wrings her hands (like wringingout the wash) trying to mournthe stranger lying there, remotein his final traveling clothes,the skull beneath his skin risingto the surface as surely as the moon'swhite skull rises at the window,snuffing out innocent stars.

She mourns instead the strangershe is to herself, sitting up all nightfor stingy wages. But grief is good,she read somewhere, it scours the souland is the only work she knows.Her eyes rest on the coffin—that silk-lined boxcar to eternity.She thinks of her own losses:

a love she squandered once;a mother and father who mournedeach other all their married life;a terrier, the pick of the litter.In the morning walking to the bus stop,

April flourishing around her,she'll mourn the new green leaveswith scarcely half a year left in them.