From the steps at the one-room schoolhouse

Lambs graze the garden-green hillside;
they bleat and call and share warmth with their woolen necks,
and the bells around them clack--hollow, harmonically.
The forest smells of wet newfallen needles,
clumped in little mounds under the pines;
a late-afternoon cold soaks in with the shadows.

The preacher's lips touch gently the microphone.
He is pleased but dutiful; he speaks quietly,
hints of how to defy time with powers more sincere.
Celebratory music guides single-file walks.
There are pledges of union and love,
a prolonged kiss, arms in the air, leaps from the stage.

But with their backs to me, crouched behind it all I sit,
admire the life that lifts its eyes skyward
from the damp earth--like persistent wildflowers,
that when hewn down, push up again
from roots sown in hidden pockets underground--
where some source of love resides.

Because pronouncements and circles and titles
are just symbols, outward appearance;
they are ceremony, ritual, leaps from a stage.
And the provenance of it all
rests in those souls--thriving under skin, pulsing of blood,
inexplicably coursing chemicals through synapses:

the things that can't be recorded,
the sound of bells, barely ringing in the winter,
round the necks of hillside sheep.