On the Farm

At its essence all death is as raw and fragile tragic as this one:

the infant chick, a golden cream yellow few days hatched fresh from her cardboard box delivered by mail

peeping, crooning tripping herself in sawdust and newspaper shavings with her boisterous sisters a bouncing camaraderie of saffron fuzz feathers just emerging at their wing tips like the first fibrous stems from a seedling afternoon

an unobserved trauma perhaps, her chest crushed a little invisible bleeding pain within her slight form abruptly she flails in an unnatural diagonal circling frantically, dragging one wing, one leg immobile something is wrong

she pleads over and over in a meager voice urgent and incessant cheeping suddenly opens wide her black stone eyes lengthens her thin body beak gaping legs and feet clenching, jutting outward her little body stretched like an arrow it is happening inside her something breaking we, heartsick, hold her as she descends into herself those last numb hours still breathing half-alive, twitching weakly eyes closed, unresponsive to touch a panting little flower wilting in our cupped palms twelve hours it takes for her to die we find her after dinner, stiff and cold her nothing of a body fluff and a few hollow bones beak, a sharply pointed pebble clawed feet dry and cramping she is nothing, really just the beginning of a bird dies without mother her cheerful, chirping sisters oblivious to her anguished avian thoughts dies unnoticed to the universe she falls into the hole the one where we will find ourselves some day

our final destination lives folding, draining fading into nothingness as this chick

who now decays in the weeds by the wooden fence post beneath chickory and queen anne’s lace behind the barn if only we are so lucky in our insignificance to be mourned like the farm boy who mourns the dead bird with a rolling grief shaking shoulders sobbing into his bed sheets