The Chicken I Want to Be

This is a poem that most reflects my mood, as I wake up having turned 60 in the night.

Passing a Truck Full of Chickens at Night on Highway Eighty
by Jane Mead

What struck me first was their panic.

Some were pulled by the wind from moving
to the ends of the stacked cages,
some had their heads blown through the bars –
and could not get them in again.

Some hung there like that-dead –
their own feathers blowing, clotting
in their faces. Then
I saw the one that made me slow some-
I lingered there beside her for five miles.

She had pushed her head through the space
between bars‑to get a better view.
She had the look of a dog in the back

of a pickup, that eager look of a dog
who knows she’s being taken along.
She craned her neck.

She looked around, watched me, then
strained to see over the car  ‑ strained
to see what happened beyond.

That is the chicken I want to be.

Mary Oliver poem

After our discussion about the spirit and the soul, I read this poem to Robert.

Some Questions You Might Ask  Is the soul solid, like iron? Or is it tender and breakable, like the wings of a moth in the beak of an owl? Who has it, and who doesn’t? I keep looking around me. The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus. The swan opens her white wings slowly. In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness. One question leads to another. Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg? Like the eye of a hummingbird? Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop? Why should I have it, and not the anteater who loves her children? Why should I have it, and not the camel? Come to think of it, what about maple trees? What about the blue iris? What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight? What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves? What about the grass? Mary Oliver, “Some Questions You Might Ask” House of Light, Beacon Press, Boston (1990) Also: New and Selected Poems (1992), p. 65