Chickens

As winter laid in,
our Wyandotte grew to bullying,
plucking tail feathers from her coop-mates,
occasionally at first, then methodically stalking
until they dropped prostrate before her,
wings spread like sunning vultures.

She had to go and I sent her,
plucked and gutted,
hackles, silver-laced and black-fringed,
a string of unlaid eggs arranged on our counter
from orange salmon roe to single ping-pong ball,
tomorrow’s aborted offering.

Cleaned and dry, I opened the nest-box door
and cradled her morning’s egg,
brown and stretched as blown glass,
the only double-yoke she ever laid.
She couldn’t have known her fate before I did.
Still, if animals predict earthquakes,
why not the tremors of sleep?

The leftover hens clucked obliviously
as I entered the coop with scratch
—chipped corn and more—in cupped hands.
They gathered and tapped like dancers.
A Golden Campine leaned in
and pecked a Speckled Sussex on the head,
slow and quick as a snake.
New order cracked open like a seed.