It was tragic when her time came <br />After a lifetime of laying brown eggs <br />Among the white of leghorns. <br />Now, unattractive to the rooster, <br />Laying no more eggs, <br />Faking it on other hens' nests, <br />Caught in the act, <br />Taken to the woodpile <br />In the winter of execution. <br /> <br />A quick stroke of the axe, <br />One first and last upward cast <br />Of eyes that in life <br />Had looked only down, <br />Scanning the ground for seeds and worms <br />And for the shadow of the hawk. <br />Now those eyes are covered <br />By yellow lids, <br />Closing from the bottom up. <br /> <br />Decapitated, she did not act <br />Like a chicken with its head cut off. <br />No pirouettes, no somersaults, <br />No last indignity. <br />Like an English queen, she died. <br />On wings that had never known flight. <br />She flew, straight into the woodpile, <br />And there beat out slow death <br />While her curdled voice ran out in blood. <br /> <br />A scalding and a plucking of no purpose. <br />No goose feathers for a comforter. <br />No duck's down for a pillow. <br />No quill for a pen. <br />In the opened body, no entrail message for the haruspex. <br />Not one egg of promise in the oviduct. <br />In the gray gizzard, no diamond or emerald, <br />But only half-ground corn, <br />Sure evidence of unprofitability. <br />The breast and legs, <br />The wings and thighs, <br />The strong heart, <br />The pope's nose, <br />Fit only for chicken soup and stew. <br />And then in March, near winter's end, <br />When bloodied and feathered wood is used, <br />The odor of burnt offerings <br />Above the kitchen stove.<br /><br />Eugene Joseph McCarthy<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-death-of-the-old-plymouth-rock-hen/
