On a Chicken Lesson 2.0 + poetry
I am fortunate that even my vegan friends put up with me discussing my feathered friends, as I did last night while describing my recent broody hen.
“Broody” is what you call a hen who is sitting on eggs like she is trying to hatch them, except they will never hatch because they haven’t been fertilized. Broody hens are very grouchy and will peck viciously at you if you try to get the eggs underneath them. I’ve never had such an extreme circumstance, but sometimes they will refuse to eat or drink and and become weak and sickly.
So I put on a pair of gloves, opened the nesting box, and extracted the squawking hen from atop the eggs. I walked around and put her in the run so she could get some water and food.
She was upset and disoriented, though, and fluffed her feathers indignantly. Immediately another chicken, evidently higher in the pecking order, came over and started pecking at her neck and head. I was aghast and tried to chase the offending hen away until equilibrium established itself again in the coop.
The other hens must have sense the broody chicken’s vulnerable mental and physical state, and, as I explained to my friends last night, chickens can be pretty merciless. They can even be cannibalistic: if one of them were to die in the coop, the others would eat her.
There’s much to examine about chicken behavior, but what I want to think about tonight is broodiness. I think that using the term “broody” as a human attribute must have come directly from its description of chicken behavior.
How often do we become moody, grouchy, and stuck, sitting on something that will never come to fruition? How often do we lash out at those who try to redirect us because we are desperately hanging on to a worn-out dream? How often are we forced to reevaluate and left dazed and incapacitated by the emotional trauma of letting go of grasped attachments?
I had such compassion on this broody hen, because in her, I saw myself. I saw myself protecting sweet dreams that will never come to pass but I won’t release. I saw myself more comfortable with misguided self-sacrifice than with nourishing my body with what it needs.
Tonight I was at a kirtan session, and one of the chants had to do with asking for the things that need to die to pass away, making space for new growth. This teaching is echoed in many religious traditions, including Indigenous spirituality and my own Christian story. And while I knew I needed to pray that prayer, I also found myself resisting – I don’t want to let go of the dreams and patterns that need to die. Even though I know that the false security of the nest is based on a problematic conviction, it’s still hard to change.
Perhaps that’s why sometimes God puts people and circumstances in our lives that force that shift. Am I resisting those, as well? What would it take for me to relax into the arms of the one holding me, bringing me back to sustenance and reintegrating me back into community? Can I welcome that chicken-keeper? Can I welcome…me?
bronze age
As an excuse,
I remind myself that early civilizations did not have mirrors.
Only in the rare stillness of a lake could we see our own faces,
And even then ripples softened the gaze.
But now I resent staring into my own eyes more than a moment –
My body curls, fingers dig
Into the soft skin of my forearm,
Bringing me back to my body,
The one I can feel but do not ask me
To see.
I can’t.
Why is it easy to make eye contact with
Others, but my own brown irises
Open up some vast pupillary holes
That threaten to take my
Breath away,
And so I gasp for air to keep away the wonder.
I close my eyes to hang on to my shame.