Tonight the hens refuse to sleep.
They are sitting in the corner
of the coop, still and wide-eyed.
Even they must know—
an emptying body is still a gift:
rippled, burnt cerise of insides,
the way each pocket of inner skin
folds into the other, esoteric.
Wahashteeny ya omi.
I miss how every dawn
you’d toss the feed, your hands faithful
to the creatures, to the good work of rising
to the soft beckon of light, to the call of roosters
just as the thinnest nail slit
in the sky is filled with the injury of day.
Read on . . .
“Losing the Farm,” a poem by Felicity Sheehy