Scotch Blackfaced Ewe

by Hilary Jupp

Here’s one that missed the gather.
Straggling where her lamb succumbed, this ewe
drifts her fleece over heather and furze.

Follow her, you may retrieve enough to spin.
Eventually she’ll shed it all in matted clumps,
then saunter, scruffy, bleating her call at the flock

flooding up to the common moor, their flanks,
shoulders, necks shorn close to the skin.
Each fleece clipped in one entire blanket,

while she, losing her teeth, evades the cull
as the waste of her winter cloak
falls away in her wake.

A Runner-Up, Stanza Poetry Competition 2014 on the theme of 'Neglect', judged by Les Robinson.

Hilary Jupp on her poem: On reading the meaning of neglect in my dictionary the first image that came to mind was the ewe, a sight I often saw when living on the southern edge of Dartmoor. Our home was surrounded by an area of moorland, where sheep and ponies took shelter in bad weather, to give birth and in failing health. Now living at sea level more than anything else I miss the sound and sight of the sheep.

Les Robinson on the poem: 'Scotch Blackfaced Ewe' intrigued with its description of the ewe that drifts her fleece over heather and furze, bleating her call at the flock and the sense of wildness across the moor contrasted by the flock returning to the moor shorn close to the skin and the penultimate line beautifully stated the waste of her winter cloak.

Hilary Jupp

Since moving from Dartmoor, where she lived for many years, to a village in Cornwall, Hilary recently came to live by the Plymouth waterfront. She’s also had poems published in various poetry journals and anthologies and is pleasantly surprised to know that she still has something to say and write about in her new home environment. Although her working life in community psychiatry was in Plymouth, she is now living in a city for the first time in her life. Her winning poem in the Poetry News Members' Competition went on to appear in the Forward Prize Anthology 2014.