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Monday Meditations
I was scheduled to do a reading in an open barn on a working hobby farm. I knew there would be chickens running through the barn during the reading, so I challenged myself to write a "chicken ode" for the reading...
SONG OF THE CHICKEN
Chickens might be proof
that brains are overrated.
They seem to manage fine
with their empty little skulls,
bobbing along on scaled
and barbed dinosaur feet
they can weaponize in
sudden midair skirmishes,
their wings tucked back
like Grandma with her fists
on her hips, coming after
a sassy child. We humans
use our fancy gyri and sulci,
that convoluted grey matter,
to analyze, strategize, solutionize
the problem of bugs, until
we come up with zappers,
swatters, sprays, colorful
chemical bracelets, and still
we need calamine for the bites.
Chickens just eat the bugs
then poop out perfect fertilizer
for our chicken-pecked tomatoes.
So in the Wheel of Life, you
come back as a princess, a lion,
a Monarch butterfly, the
Dalai lama. Me, I’ll settle
for a happy chicken.
