I was shearing a ewe and she was wrathful, for she was an old ewe, the oldest ewe we had, and we had kept her from when she was a pet lamb, fed her by the bottle, for her mother had died moments after birthing her, and left a white mound, heaped out on our scraggy hill, just down from the yard, where she lay among the yellow ferns and tall thistles, so when she was a young lamb, all her memory came from touch, our early touches of the bottle towards her mouth, her wool hard and coarse, and as she grew, her sensory memory was alive, and now, she’d had enough of her wool being taken, stripped off her, she kept hopping and leaping at the back of the holding pen, late May, flocked with all the other sheep, ready, she darted this way and that, head down, for the old ewe was too old to be meat, as she scrambled back into the corner, her feet skidding out from under her, desperate to stay heavy with her coat, for maybe her memory knew that November was cruel, but nothing to the March winds that would come again, with hail and wicked frosts, and that utter cruelty of April, trying to kill off what it has spawned, spiting itself, when the early growth would flourish in earnest, and this old ewe had birthed lamb after lamb, clean and fast, each spring, early to drop, always one of the first, giving us Easter meat, and every summer we’d grab her by the neck in the pen, and straddle her between our thighs, my younger brother holding down her body, I’d knock her sideways, gently, and he’d kneel softly upon her warm coarse wool to pin her, as I’d snip at her with an old blade shears, as her coat flocked back on itself into folds, wings of buttery yellow, damp, it became one rug, and we’d skirt it, roll it, helping her up, as her frightened eyes watched for my brother to lift up the blue metal clasp of the gate, and when he’d swing it back open, she’d dart out, rushing up the steps of the pen, shitting nervously, and run back down towards the scraggy hill, unused to the lightness of her body now, two or three fresh red wounds in my wake, and I’d berate myself as I was falling to sleep that night, tossing and turning, for the clumsy sharp cuts I left on her, that she didn’t deserve, that would sting, I’d felt woeful, embarrassed at her exhaustion, at her body’s benightedness, her terrified dark eye staring at me, and my hands, wet from sweat, sticking to the small shards of paint on the old royal-blue shears, the paint chipping off to reveal a rusty dirtybrown, like the ewe’s particle knowledge, in pieces, how to lie still, play dead, hide, show yourself, hide again, when to jump up and run, and run, running fast away from us, giving her last birth out on the hill, the old ewe is down, the ewe is sick, hunt her in, grunting, hunt her out, bleating, leave her to the sun, the wind, the rain, spray her, dip her, copper injections, toss her, watch her, count her, until she dies, until we rolled up her last wool coat, the last offering, and we gathered it, twined it neatly, it was warm and comfortable, and I let her go, as she skittered out through my hands, running on past the open gate, out to join the herd, though this time, she slowed to a walk, uncertain up against the strong breeze on the hill, her shorn beating skin stayed throbbing under my nervous hands as she, at last, put her head down and grazed a little, and until eventually, I could no longer feel her body under mine, as my own blood roused through me now, coursing, hot, alive, just, then rushing, whooshing, whooshing, until I no longer felt pain, just a gentle gushing in my ears, warm, goodbye, I have known you, I have known the way of you, now as you were, and I thanked her for all she had given us.