summoning the sun

For the Thursday dVerse prompt (better late than never) “morning has broken“. The challenge was to write an aubade. I didn’t quite manage that, but here is a description of an aubade (of sorts) that starts about 0400 every morning here:

Listen to him crowing:
again and again rooster calls,
summoning the sun.
An hour, and another hour
and another hour of darkness
do not dent his tenacity.

Admire his determination:
(becoming tinged with desperation?)
he does not stop
until his efforts are rewarded
by the reluctant slug-a-bed sun.

And see him now:
strutting proudly among the hens
proclaiming loudly:
“Look! For you, I have summoned the sun!
For you I have brought this new day!
This I have done, for you!”

Clucking to each other,
the hens submit to his advances
as to a minor inconvenience,
then, ruffling their feathers straight,
they go about their day.

The adventures of Beaky McBeaky and Baby Barry I

A collaboration with my daughter:

Beaky McBeaky was ever so cheeky,
his brother, Baby Barry, less so.
Through the coop, Beaky sneakied,
and right after him Barry followed.

As Soup cock-a-doodled,
and the Meepers were cheeping,
right up to the foodles
the naughty McBeakies were creeping.

With their beaks in the trough,
they ignored pecking order,
until Cream chased them off –
the great fluffy-knickered coop warder.

But Beaky McBeaky, always so sneaky,
just hid ‘hind the back of a stump,
when Cream looked away, ever so cheeky
out of hiding McBeakies did jump!

Beaky McBeaky ran straight to the trough,
his baby brother behind,
beaks down see them scoff
at the pecking order defied.

 

The McBeakies, Beaky and Baby Barry, are the most recently hatched chicks and the Meepers (Laveen, Altona and Little Big Fred) are the previous clutch. Cream is one of the hens and Soup (what’s in a name?) is one of the two remaining roosters.  

like a duck to…

Poor little sad confuséd duck,
born to quack but taught to cluck.
your adoptive mother, a broody hen,
never taught you to swim, and then,
taken roughly from the flock,
the humans stand, and point and mock
as you flap and panic in the drink,
wildly fearing that you will sink
and shuffle off this mortal globe,
my poor little ducky hydrophobe.

 

We decided the ducks, who think they’re chickens, needed a wash.  They were coated in muddy muck from the chicken coop after lots of wet weather – Werribee (pictured) was living up to his name. So we threw them in the dam, much to their horror and outrage.  Then one of the kids fell in too…   It’s been a good day.  😀 

casting nasturtiums

We finally got a decent frost and it’s killed off a bathtub full of nasturtiums. So I pulled them all out this afternoon and threw them to the chooks, who were very happy to have them.

Cookies and Cream, sweet as a dream
but rarely ever an egg between.
Ninja’s a handsome Australorp hen,
she used to lay well, but that was then…
The same is true for the five misses Brown,

Goulburn poultry auction

Rain pelting the tin roof gives a soft-solid background
to hens muttering annoyance and cocks crowing their outrage.
All those birds, five hundred or more,
waiting to be judged, their worth determined,
to be found wanting or wanted.

calling the sun to the sky (pantoum)

I wanted to write a pantoum yesterday for the dVerse prompt “coming full circle“, but between work and kids I just didn’t have the head space for something that long or structured. But with a whole have-to-free day I’ve indulged myself this morning with a second coffee and some writing time. Here is this morning’s attempt, inspired by Laverton’s 0600 reveille: 

The old cock crows.
Stretching his neck up
to start the new day,
he calls the sun to the sky.

grim eaters

Death comes in darkness from below,
with claws and teeth,
snuffling and sneaking,
slipping under the wire,

a henhouse full of roosters

For dVerse’s Haibun Monday: Eagle. Our local apex raptors are wedge-tailed eagles, they stand up to 1.2m tall, have a wingspan more than 2m, and have been known to take lambs and small ‘roos.

My neighbour has the worst luck. Everyone out here keeps chickens, and everyone loses the odd one. But her chooks seem to have a life expectancy of under a week. She’s lost them to foxes (well, haven’t we all?) and to a neighbour’s dog, and the goshawks, and coxy… One time she got some fertile eggs, and hatched them in an incubator. From ten eggs, she got eight roosters. One of the two hens was killed by a fox, so she put the rest of the birds in my coop until she reinforced hers. My Muscovy drake killed the last hen, so I gave her back her roosters.

hawk

This is for Frank’s Haikai challenge #176: Hawk, and also in response to Dwight’s “The King”.  

 Hunger rides the wind,
watching for the flicker of
small life far below. 

yet more Sunday morning ha’ sonnets

The dawn chorus begins…

Magpie song flows
a clear, bright stream