Poetic Responses to The Good Shepherd imagery found in John 10:11-18.

The Hired Hand
By Brandon Duke

I’m afraid I’m the hired hand. I don’t comprehend the lambs fully.
They are fully known by God alone.
What’s it like to be fully known?
For a moment I imagine
the Good Shepherd circling his gaze towards me knowing I’ve been
hired out by one (or another) yet not defined by it.
Instead, and perhaps for the first time in my life
I am regarded by Being itself.
I straighten my posture, dust off my shirt, becoming as giddy as a little girl,
“He sees me. He really sees me.”
Not only does he take notice, he knows my name
and for a moment I imagine him
loving me more than sheep – precious though they are.

In his gaze I am not hired. I am healed.
On his watch I am not lonely. I am fulfilled.
In time I will come to know him in his fullness.

The Enigma
By Anne Stevenson

Falling to sleep last night in a deep crevasse
between one rough dream and another, I seemed,
still awake, to be stranded on a stony path,
and there the familiar enigma presented itself
in the shape of a little trembling lamb.
It was lying like a pearl in the trough between
one Welsh slab and another, and it was crying.

I looked around, as anyone would, for its mother.
Nothing was there. What did I know about lambs?
Should I pick it up? Carry it . . . where?
What would I do if it were dying? The hand
of my conscience fought with the claw of my fear.
It wasn’t so easy to imitate the Good Shepherd
in that faded, framed Sunday School picture
filtering now through the dream’s daguerreotype.

With the wind fallen and the moon swollen to the full,
small, white doubles of the creature at my feet
flared like candles in the creases of the night
until it looked to be alive with newborn lambs.
Where could they all have come from?
A second look, and the bleating lambs were birds—
kittiwakes nesting, clustered on a cliff face,
fixing on me their dark accusing eyes.

There was a kind of imperative not to touch them,
yet to be of them, whatever they were—
now lambs, now birds, now floating points of light—
fireflies signaling how many lost New England summers?
One form, now another; one configuration, now another.
Like fossils locked deep in the folds of my brain,
outliving a time by telling its story. Like stars.

Psalm 23 King James Version (KJV)
Traditionally attributed to King David

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Collect of the Day

O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people: Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads; who, with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.