a sudden hammering

there is a woman in love with my husband. she buried a lamb this morning i didn’t. ahead of myself. the woman and my husband share a meadow. the woman walks barefoot in the meadow to prove a point. the point is she, too, is capable of sorrow. my husband takes this story he warms it between his hands. the woman has five sheep. they all impregnate each other. it is november. the woman says any day now. the three of us wait for birth. i study the ewe. try to imagine an entire hooved being in her stomach. it is december. it is january. i take pleasure in how wrong the woman was. how little she knows. when birth comes i am elsewhere. the woman drives into the meadow to find twin lambs one dead. she buried a lamb this morning i didn’t. she leaves the meadow i enter it. i follow the lamb and the lamb mouths at winter light. startles itself into being. i keep my shoes on. my husband bounds in. my husband jumps the electric fence he bounds in. lamb in his arms my husband makes phone calls. the morning is broken on the ground. he is still the softest man i know. we find the afterbirth among the briars. my husband thinks of coyotes. my husband nurses a stick into the soft pink after. he carries it into the woods where i cannot see. later it is the electric fence that kills the other lamb not a coyote following the smell of birth.