Out to the Coop

A poem about keeping chickens

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Out to the Coop

Can you do it every day?
Can you do it with the cool summer dew 
soaking the whole sole
of both your shoes? Can you cut a path
through eight inches of fresh or crusted
or wet or ice-concealing snow? Can you limp it 
when a muscle in overuse
rips its fibers? Can you manage it
as: “she has cancer” or “a month to live,
maybe two” marches through
your steps? What about: “will I
ever recover?” and the thorough
and disinterested silence that always
greets such questions? Can you do it
when the moon is so big 
you must run back to the house
to say: “put down your screen and look!”
Can you go, even when
you don’t really want to? Can you
clean out a mouse trap
once, and then another 
900 times? Can you stoop 
to asking for help
when you need it? Can 
you carry a gallon of water? Can you bear
the sight of one of your birds
whose eggs have sustained you, whose
downy baby fluff once touched your careful 
palm, who you have watched survive winter
after winter, who ran in the purposeful 
and unaffected way of chickens 
to devour strawberry tops with such joy 
and abandon, can you bear her 
lifeless body, uncanny as lifelessness 
is always uncanny, left behind 
where she chose it to be left, often
somewhere safe, hidden, underneath,
a place she would have fled to as a chick, can you bear it
on an average evening, some chore
half done, company’s coming, 
and you in the middle 
of some important chain of thoughts,
and there she will be. Her—
corporeal, present but flown,
released into this great cycle
that you have, if you can choose it,
committed to witness.

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