I wish I had a sheep.
My pal Luckey and I are drinking coffee on my front porch on
Saturday morning and she points to a bare circle of dirt bordered by stones.
It’s about 8 feet wide, the only bare dirt in my very green, fern and pond bedecked
frog garden yard. (I have this idea that we could have a city life with frogs
and the sound of them at night andand also nightclubs and great coffee and shoe
stores and high-rises.)
“What’s going to go there?” My friend Lucky says, pointing
to the dirt.
”That’s where Forest and I make mud pies.” I say. “It’s a
free zone. Maybe someday I’ll put in gravel.”
”Or grass,” says Luckey. “You could lay on the grass… look
up at the sky.”
”Then I have to mow it,” I say.
I don’t want to mow it… but
I do like to lay on the grass. I turn to her. “What I want is a sheep who will
crop it for me. Actually, I don’t want a sheep. I want to rent someone else’s
sheep. I want there to be a sheep lawn service. Just show up, set up a little
circular fence my front yard every week or so. I look over the fence at my neighbors’
lawns. “Maybe we could go in on it together?” This would be better for frogs
than the puree experience of a lawnmower.
Plus, there’s the shepherd… For some reason, right off the bat I picture
great pecs and suspenders. Don’t you?
But, maybe a sheep is a silly thing to waste a full moon
wish on. It’s a blood moon tonight, a special kind of full moon eclipse that
makes the moon look red. Everybody’s talking about it. The guy at the grocery
store – 20’s, blonde curly hair…he’d make a striking shepherd come to think of
it – said this is the first of four blood moons, one every six months starting
now. He also said that it's auspicious that this one comes the same day that
Passover starts and that that hasn't happened since the first Passover. “I
mean, the very first one,” he says, inclining his head. So, I ask him if he
follows astrology. “Oh yeah,” he says. “Like lots of Jews, I’m a secular
humanist I follow all kinds of traditions” He tells me “they say that that
first blood moon was a bad omen…but this one, I think it’s the beginning of a
new era,” he says. The time to let go of old, oh, I don’t know… resentments,” he says, then looks at
me. “Did I mention I’m a Jew?”
He says all this as his deft hands pass butter lettuce,
strawberries, snap peas, and chocolate over the scanner and the boy with down
syndrome bags it for me.
The shepherd_ – I believe I’ll just go ahead and call him
that – has blonde hair on his knuckles.
I sort of like hairy knuckles.
(Is it weird to entertain lustful thoughts about a Jew I’m
calling the shepherd while he tells me an astrological story about Jesus?)
Maybe. I think the world could use a little more weird. I
think a new beginning on a whole lotta fronts is a good idea. I think it's time
to dream big. Not just sheep lawnmowers and articulate blond shepherds, but new
beginnings where we dare to believe that a better world, a big change is
possible. So, I don't know, maybe a sheep isn't really a small wish. Maybe it’s
the beginning of believing in a new weirder, more beautiful (and musical)
world.
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