SHEARING SHED, VAUCLUSE

‘Get over ‘em, Blue!  Garn, get over ‘em!’

hanging by a thread in the forcing-pen   one year’s income

       on the swoop   the manager tosses his border collie

         to ride the waves of nervy knotty-woolled backs

which get up his nose, this brainless baaing mob of bleaters

daggy followers with their skit-skit-skittering

on stage   gang of six shearers   in blue singlets

             - Greg leaning over a dangled back-brace -

      shuffling to slick steady rhythm and whooshing hum

        hogs      arthritic grannies as laid-back partners

 some gun shearer dude backs in through saloon-type

   doors    dragging another hogget by front legs

then cranks one foreleg under his own crotch

     where blue jeans double-patched are rent again

cloven hoof under buttock     a devilish Kiwi touch (?)

             the long straight back bends low from the hips

shears over the hogget’s head    glides up the belly

               shaves along its back        shag dishevelling

   wig rucking and slipping     like a judge besotted

             locks and suinty wool flocking his moccasins

        suddenly unruffled   this hog   skimpily lamb-like

      all white skin and bone      save odd bloody nicks

rump-poked through the shearer’s hams

         head first   bulb-eyed   down the chute slithering

        the shearer wipes his brow   marks up his tally

    tests sharpness of blades on finely-scored thumb

                    with a flurry    the rousie throws the fleece

 to the skirting table    belly wool scraggy with grass      

       pieces from shanks and briskets     crutchings   

stained downy fibres    all flung high into oddment bins

                       

the classer handles and flicks the fleece

   grades for microns and bins for pressing

the off-shear’s plunge is broken by the bend    down

    and round clattering   stumbling into shorn-pen

           wildered    solitary      scoots gawkily

    in search of lambent flesh       mustering in file

     deloused turquoise      shoulder-branded red

  stands trembling      bleating at north-westerly chill    

and jeering of wethers in holding yard fully clad

November, 1991, Tasmania                      Michael Small