They come in large groups, dark against the clipped beige field and always there is a new one to watch—flicking a tail in concern, grazing at ease, panicked listening. My thoughts are early winter deer, their hides bristling and slackening against a cold that is mostly present.
This time period included a handful of chicken deaths. Two were due to unknown causes (which happens occasionally in chicken keeping). The third was of our own choosing—we decided to cull one of our hens, Elektra, who had never laid an egg. Butchering chickens involves separating them from the flock and fasting them for 24 hours (it’s easer and cleaner to butcher a chicken that’s got an empty digestive tract). I hemmed and hawed about culling Elektra for a while but I think it was the right decision. Still, the image of her alone in the separation cage with no food just waiting for the end sticks with me. The poem below includes this.
Death is here. Every evening I cross to the coop, thinking: please let none of them be dead. Little Ester on the floor. Blythe tucked where she used to hide as a pullet. Elektra, her small gray body alone, shedding feathers. Waiting. This night, the last night of the year, I stop on the way, eyes closed—cool breeze on my cheeks. Constant hum of life being touched. Looking I see the half dead tree's young branches, thin and lithe among the falling thick boughs reaching upward like hands. I roll open the door and hear the scratch of claw on perch— little wood sounds of the living.
This poem makes reference to a common chicken-keeping strategy used to keep chickens laying eggs all winter, which is to keep a light on a timer in the coop that mimics the longer daylight hours of spring and summer. Chickens bodies are naturally responsive to daylight levels. Their peak egg production happens during the rising daylight hours of spring, tapering off as the daylight tapers during late summer and fall, and stopping entirely during the low-light months of winter. I choose to let my chickens rest in the winter rather than using artificial light to keep them laying.
Bubble worlds of dream breeze float up around me as life becomes straight as an arrow. There are my herbs in the window, confused, totally removed from their normalcy of summer growth and winter dormancy. We do not rest in this world. Ceaselessly, I encourage their growth. At least the chickens, fluffed in the cold, are given a break— no light demanding eggs all winter.
A book of Zen Koans— pink slashes across the white snow rutted driveway.
So easy to spot, against the lonesome snow—deer together grazing.
This year I tried Dry January. I liked it, and would recommend it as a practice. The poem below was inspired by the experience.
Ice-white sober night— clear-headed, I smell the wine on everyone's breath.
Tumble of firewood clunking into place—a dozen splintered bells ringing.
The poem below plays with the haiku structure of combining two distinct and different images/ideas.
Sour bite! The huge wind outside. In this bread, so many domed pockets of air.