Spent hens

My old buff hen
sits the nest
as if still young,

her plump red comb
signaling fecundity
she no longer
possesses, being nine,

or decidedly geriatric in
woman years, her last viable
ovum having gathered
yolk and dropped sweetly

into her infundibulum
long ago, no fanfare,
quietly adding
albumen, spinning

slowly down the tunnel
of her oviduct, the story
of the world accreting,
repeating,  and then

the long layover in the
shell gland, the soft oval
armoring in calcium,
an infusion of color,

and finally the delicate
drop from her warm body,
the damp bloom evaporating
in an outer world that

always took for granted
her artistry, her industry,
her enduring devotion to
the craft of egg,

which still she expresses —
remembering, or imagining —
as the only admirable
delusion: an earnest

belief that she can still do
what she no longer can,
an innocence I feel in
my own loins,  my eggs

also exhausted and, like her,
not a single child,
but what companionable
company we keep, my

old hen and I —
imagining, or remembering —
all we could do,
all the life that ran

through us, the
brief,  immense
beauty we contained,
from the day

we were hatched
until it was spent;
all we made with it.

 

 

 

 

Tags: aging, animals, chickens, creative writing, eggs, hens, poem, poetry, spirituality, time