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.

protective custody

Constrained
behind concrete and dog wire,
the hens are in
protective custody.

Earthbound,
even their view of the sky
is impeded, criss-crossed and
filtered by mesh.

Safe from the silhouette against blue
wheeling above them,
an incarnation of freedom
and death.

 

eagles

These are my eagles, painted some weeks ago now, after writing “watching paint dry”. Today my daughter and I are painting another wall blue, in preparation for more pictures. But this will be inside one of her brother’s rooms, so will have his choice of images – so far that’s probably going to be steam-punk style flying battleships and a flying city. But I’ll sneak a bird or two in… maybe a flock of origami cranes in the background.