I still recall a memory from my childhood
Long years ago and many miles away
The robin on the flowering hawthorn singing
And the high fields wore their wildflowers of the May.
A black faced horned ewe had given birth to twins that morning
One weakly lamb on ground beside her lay
And the other suckled happily tail a waggling
In the bright sunshine of the early day.
From wood of Claramore a gray crow flew out
In darkened face and feathers black and gray
One of the birds detested by the mountain sheepmen
The only good one a dead one they say.
Beside the weakly lamb the crow alighted
And started pecking at the new born's eyes
I ran to shoo off the vicious assailant
And to aid the helpless 'pain in his bleating cries'
Out of his left side eye the lamb was bleeding
But his mother came and licked the blood away
From a fate far worse than death perhaps I'd saved him
And at least his first would not be his last day.
And I was ten years old as I remember
And that was close to fifty years ago
That I saved a lamb in a field by Clara Mountain
From a painful lingering death of a gray crow.
Francis Duggan
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-still-recall-a-memory-from-my-childhood/
