My Lost Sheep ~ A Poet’s Parable

Little red notebook (Photo credit: Halans)

 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’~ Luke 15:6

Through shelves and drawers,
under the bed and, with cheeks crimson,
to the Lost and Found,
I searched. You could say
it was just a red-coated gathering of paper,
a gift from my daughter of
a handful of such notebooks.
It wandered from my pocket one day
to the unknown I wished to make known
upon its pages.
Akin to the Shepherd leaving the ninety-nine
to search the wilderness for
that one lost piece of mutton on the hoof,
I disregarded all the others.

Like lambs that must be protected,
a notebook is a newborn thing until
you fill it with your heartbeat,
share secrets, truths, lies, and
draw a map through the darkness,
the journal of your journey,
that voyage of discovery and rediscovery.
The other day, while rummaging
through the dark rough country
at the back of my closet,
I found my literary sheep gone astray.
I carried it back to my desk,
where the remaining flock lie in the lea
and opened to where my journey had left off.

It read:
No sleep again—Each night I press
my eyes closed and all that comes
are tears.
I pulled out my pencil and we stepped
into the darkness again.