No Owl and no Pussycat
By Dave Hubble
It was not often that sheep went to sea, but the tides lapped ever higher on their little rocky isle with its thin, wiry grass and threatened to submerge it, so the clever ewes put their nimble little hooves to good use and fashioned a beautiful buttercup-yellow boat, ‘The Mythic Fleece’, from driftwood and washed-up fishing floats; the flotsam of potential ovine freedom. With a rippling chorus of baas, the flock pushed off from the strip of machair where their shepherd arrived on shearing day and bid a fond farewell to last season’s lambs as they headed for the mainland, trusting the currents to take them there, for they had neither sails nor oars. The trip began well with clear, calm morning weather and a helpful tide that took them towards Soay sea loch where they hoped to land on the easy shingle beach below Ronaldsay Castle. Left behind as being argumentative, brainless curly-horned red-raddled headbangers of no use beyond making lambs, the rams left behind stood on top of the highest rock and tried to look noble silhouetted against the sky; if they were budgies, they’d have been pecking at their mirrors.
It was all going so well until the wind picked up, a nasty little squall that was the tail end of Storm Dolly, they heard later, and pushed them onto a nasty string of sharp skerries where The Fleece foundered and broke up. With nothing to do but swim for it, they headed for the beach, the strongest helping the weaker swimmers stay afloat, led by Mighty Maa, the flock matriarch; o, the ovinity! All made it alive, albeit waterlogged and salty around midday and were soon found by a fisherman who called their shepherd to drive them to a safe pasture with rich, juicy grass and sheep-lick treats; he did not take them back to the isle and they never saw the rams again, they were free and always went neatly into pens without need of snarling dog or fictional pig. And so it was in Soay when the seas began to rise.
Bio: Dave is a disabled writer, visual artist and retired ecologist/entomologist from Hampshire, UK, performs widely at events including Brighton Fringe and Winchester Poetry Festival, has published his work in numerous magazines and anthologies as well as an illustrated pamphlet, Navigational Array (Dense Weed, 2017) and won the 2019 Bread &Roses Poetry Prize.
Author’s Notes: ‘No Owl & No Pussycat. was inspired by a painting in a friend’s house,’Night Shepherd’ by Paul Bloomer, depicting sheep on an exposed Scottish islet, which our weekly poetry group used as a prompt. Imagined the sheep escaping by boat when the sea level rose and threatened to inundate it, and the title is a reimagining of ‘The Owl &the Pussycat’ nursery rhyme.
