The short and brutal life of chickens
Come the fox’s jaws, raccoon,
Even weasel, maybe.
Word is there is one around, been spotted sneaking, arriving
after dark, leaving
like a ghost

The legacy of feathers
Drifts and clumps, 
bits of sunlit gristle, trailing
from the ravaged coop down the grassy backyard 
to the trees, where the predators emerge and return
Emerge and return.

The last terrified moments. 
If one is taken only,
and two or three are left, how
do the left-behind wait out their days remaining?
What survivor guilt, 
what privilege of another day under the sun, 
what shivers of impending doom? 
They rustle, restless, on their perches
Shifting weight from foot to chicken foot, the night long.

My mother went out
Determined each time, after each dramatic end, 
to reinforce the walls and keep the predators at bay. 
To try to frustrate their attacks from below,
from above, from the trees and the dirt 
and the sky.
To stop them from taking the chickens her granddaughters named.

But after the penultimate chicken was snatched
she sent her final hen away, a refugee
to a foreign coop. 

She didn’t have the heart to keep chickens any longer.

The coop is empty now.
The home of vines, wildflowers, peeling paint. 
The odd downy feather clings, moving a little in the breeze.
As if alive.