Counting Sheep by David Brooks

I count to try to get myself to sleep
the numbers backward from one hundred
as someone told me was the way with sheep

ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six…
then if I reach zero, still backwardly
begin to count forward again
minus one, minus two, minus three …

each exhalation a ewe or wether
stepping from the exit planks, each one
a whisper of breath across my tongue

In a month, as I calculate,
I’ll unload three thousand or so,
in a year at least thirty, and in two
my ghost shipment could at last be free

but something always happens
the numbers oscillate
exits turn into boarding ramps
the ships always depart

for the sweltering days at the Equatorial, dry
heat over the Gulf
the acrid water washing the baking deck

the sea-mad crew, the dying lambs
the bodies sinking in the fleece-white wake

On a good night I’ll count almost none
or lose track after forty or so, my thoughts
straying, or one
or another of them wandering off
to watch the kelp in the tide-flow

On a bad night I’ll count four or five hundred
and get no sleep at all

I’m a longtime insomniac. Almost nightly I “count sheep”, though it’s more a case of counting breaths, as the poem suggests. Counting sheep is difficult for me. I live with rescued sheep and to me each sheep’s a face, a personality. I’ve tried to give each sheep I count a face and personality, but that’s exhausting. I can’t get beyond a dozen or so. The repetition of faces I know becomes too distracting.

Then there’s the matter of point-of-view. To count sheep effectively they must pass a set point individually – follow a path single-file, say, or go one-by-one up or down a ramp. In the poem I’ve chosen the latter. I abhor live export; I want to save sheep from it. The ramp my sheep come down is an exit-ramp, before their ship departs. In effect I’m stealing sheep, each one an escapee. But it isn’t so easy. The sheep are trapped. Save one from export and you condemn him/her to slaughter anyway. At least with live export there’s a cruise first, though of course – again – it’s hardly like that. The voyage is a horror worse than any the Ancient Mariner experienced. And live export’s just an example.

Count sheep any which way and you realise you’re both in an awful bind, trapped in the messy guts of the human mind. The ships depart regardless. Exits become boarding-ramps. Numbers seem to progress but in fact move backward. All these things are in the poem one way or another. The exhaustion and frustration (insomnia) of animal advocacy, the hopes dashed repeatedly. The way you must keep going, day after day, night after night. But also (“kelp in the wave-wash”) the glimmers of hope, of how things might be.

• Australian Poetry Month runs throughout August and includes festivals, events, workshops and a commissioned poem of the day brought to you by Red Room Poetry. Find out more here