Soliloquy

The Lost-And-Found Lamb

September 24, 2025 - 9:15 pm

TW: major character death

The mourning dove took her concert outside when the rain let the sun through the clouds. The boy returned with a friend, and they attracted small crowds. Cooing sweetly, she requested: “settle in, hush up, and pull closed your shrouds.”

I was born into a large flock, a number over one hundred,

There were enough of us that I was safe when we were hunted.

I could cower behind my brothers when the wolves sniffed around,

Until the farmer found out and chased the pack off with the hound.

We were happy and safe in that pure clover pasture,

Meandering rolling hills as we awaited our rapture.

Perhaps it would be more apt to say we feared the rupture,

Of our vessels, our lives, and our comfortable structure.

But as time went on, we noted strange occurrences,

Blood, a missing lamb, and a howl, despite the deterrences.

When the lamb was found, he kept his lips shut tight,

And a shiver down my spine told me he wasn’t right.

Never before had we turned away our very own,

For a sheep, no less a lamb, could not survive long alone.

Along with the herd, the strange babe did come,

As the wind grew chill, but with our coats we were numb.

The mothers fussed over the lamb with soft nudges of noses,

And against their browned white, his bloodied wool juxtaposes.

There came from his back the hideous odor we took to be dirt,

And away from his side, the other lambs began to divert.

We feared his smell could catch and be contagious,

And the truth is, a sheep doesn’t have it in them to be courageous.

The mothers, then, were the only ones who seemed to care,

For the lost-and-found lamb who gave them all a scare.

I found myself inflicted with a terrible curiosity,

Though I was not special, my presence must have been a generosity.

For the lamb smiled, still with his teeth shut away,

And I must confess, I had fun as we spent days scampering in play.

I grew to care less about the scent and more about the whine,

That issued from his lips as though life was not saccharine.

When I asked him he whispered, with his head cast low,

“Though my bones get bigger, my skin doesn’t seem to grow.”

I frowned at his words, because he did seem too thin,

“And,” he said, “I wonder if I’m missing something within.”

I shook my head no, for I had come to adore him,

My strange, mumbling brother whose fate once seemed grim.

“You lack nothing but food, for I’ve never seen you eat,”

I cried out to him in my young, loud, off-kilter bleat.

For it was true, since he’d returned, he’d lost most of his weight,

And now his body shrunk and his energy dwindled at an alarming rate.

“Come eat with me, brother, we can not delay,

For if you wither to death, I’ll be left alone in dismay!”

A growl issued from his long-empty stomachs,

And I led, with my swishing tail, across the hummocks.

He confessed, in a mutter, “I have been quite hungry,

But I fear if I do eat you’ll no longer love me.”

“Nonsense!” I cried, as I stopped at a patch,

Of perfectly green and assuredly delicious grass.

“I’ll love you come rain, I’ll love you come snow,

I love you, my brother, and I’d shield you from our foe!”

A tear dripped from his eye, and he grew rather emotional,

He replied, “I love you too, though at first I found it notional.”

“How,” he continued, “could a white lamb such as you,

Love the matted wool and poor manners I've seemed to accrue?

And would you, my brother, my kin, and my friend,

Feel the same if, all my secrets, you did comprehend?”

I smiled to assure him as much as I could,

As I said proudly and full-heartedly: “yes, of course I would!”

His head rose and at last my brother met my eyes,

And in his blueish depths I felt I was seeing the skies.

“Forgive me, brother,” he said, and I saw the pearly flash,

Of teeth meant to slaughter and clamp and crash.

He must have saw it in my eyes, for he lunged at me at once,

With a speed I hadn’t noticed and made me feel like a dunce.

My own lamb brother revealed his true, unsullied face,

That of the wolf and that which was surely a disgrace.

His jaws clamped around my throat with a strength foreign,

And my mind went back to the days when we first mourned him.

My funeral service was now set a few hours away,

A wolf had broken in, and now every foolish sheep would pay.

His teeth clicked on bone and my body lost feeling,

But he released me, leaving my mind reeling.

“Brother,” he whispered, voice thin as leaves rustled by wind,

“I love you, I do, although against you I have sinned..

I came here to join you and have not fed since,

And yet still I can not attain your level of innocence.”

If my body would have obeyed, I would have replied,

That he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a monster who spied.

Though in my heart and on my still lips the words died,

For in truth, he was my brother, and he had survived.

- Mourning Dove