As a Sheep Gazes

How many memories does a sheep have?

How many hopes?

Does he recall a fine warm hill of grass?

Does he dream of rocked fencing too low

to really enclose?

Is there a summer day that comes to mind

when he and two others took charge and leaped

the stone wall? Was this day a wish

for some kind of unsheared

freedom?—loose unthreads of wool, sharp

slats of sun, unhurried rush of sea?

Is there a scratch of poetry

in his gazing past the bay?