Hen Run

The back door was the front door,
with two steps down to the farm
yard. White washed walls with hens,
cheepy chickens, aristocratic turkeys.

The cock flapped his wings, flew at
me all of three feet off the ground.
I must have yelled and Chris was there
"never mind that old fool" as she tucked

the cock by her side without a squawk,
plucking it over to the white wooded
kitchen table where the farm worker sat
on the bench with dinner and buttermilk.

Another day I walked across the yard.
A little pullet, no threat at all, ran by
and dropped down dead at my feet. Yes,
Chris was there, picked up the pullet

sniffed it, started to pluck. By the
time we got it on the kitchen table
she showed me how the tail could button
into a hole she had left in the skin.

"But I thought you couldn't eat a
hen if it just dropped dead, like that."
"Freshly dead", she said, "and a shame
to waste when a body's hungry".

A little handful of breadcrumbs, thyme,
chopped onion and we headed off down to
the main Dublin road where the cars went
by and Maggie Brown lived in her bottle

green dress and dark brown house - Chris,
my godmother, said Maggie was a poor
scrap of a thing and could do with a
good feed. So Maggie Brown got the

little chicken and I hope she enjoyed
the oniony stuffing and sucked the bones.