<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sheep<\/strong><\/p>\n A cruck of moon across the village. \u00a0A half-cut sky.<\/p>\n The farmer is driving her sheep through the lane, grub-tight,<\/p>\n in the hinged-light of an open grave.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Court Meadow is empty but soon ewes and lambs<\/p>\n will pair up for the evening. Their bleats blur with the sounds<\/p>\n of dog and a murder of crows.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The verges are lined with ghosts. The day’s hot breath has gone.<\/p>\n Sheep are shielded from gateways; jaws slack as middle-aged women.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And night presses down firm as flesh; sounds of settling as day recedes.<\/p>\n Silence hushes the polished sky, save for the bleating of desperate sheep.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jenny Hope<\/strong> is a Worcestershire based writer.\u00a0 Her poetry collection,\u00a0 Petrolhead<\/em>, was published in 2010 by Oversteps books. www.overstepsbooks.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Her website is www.poetrymaker.co.uk.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sheep A cruck of moon across the village. \u00a0A half-cut sky. The farmer is driving her sheep through the lane, grub-tight, in the hinged-light of an open grave. The Court Meadow is empty but soon ewes and lambs will pair up for the evening. Their bleats blur with the sounds of dog […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2956"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2958,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2956\/revisions\/2958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}