George Forss loves the afternoon light as much as I do, and there is nothing sweeter for me than the late afternoon light in a barn. I spent a half an hour out there with Freaky, the Swedish Flower Hen. I got some photos today I love, but I will put them up tomorrow. Going to walk around with my former girlfriend, read a book.
Fran is the hen that could. I have to be honest. My general feeling about chickens is that they are dumber than fence posts, and less durable. Everything in the world wants to eat them, and they are dumber than all of the things that want to eat them, which gives them poor odds of living long walking around. Ironically, they are not as safe as the poor corporate chickens trapped in crates their whole lives. Foxes cannot get to them.
In America many people, most urban and suburban people who do not live around animals other than pets, simply cannot believe that all animals like chickens cannot be protected from the reality of the world. I was bombarded with ideas for multi-thousands of dollar chicken fortresses, solar guard alarms. One farm wife had the best idea. She played Tom Waits on a boombox all night. “His voice scares me,” she said,” and it keeps the foxes away. But not the minks. They are not afraid of him.” That’s one I could try. Farmers cannot afford such protection for hens, who are inexpensive and are kept around for eggs, not companionship.
Fran, like Meg, has transcended the role of the hen. She has weathered near starvation, abuse and neglect, a fox attack and sever wounds, broken wings, assaults by other chickens, who are not nice to one another. Injured chickens do not get support from the community, they get pecked to death. Here in the real world of real animals, we expect to keep our chicken buckets flexible. But Fran has won a place in the Chicken Hall of Fame. She will have good place to live as long as she can do it. A chicken that could.
The photographer George Forss is coming back to the farm soon to do a panoramic show of my view, which he says is the best around. He thinks I’m nuts to be selling the farm. He says it’s the perfect place to take photos. It is too.
Lying in my wife’s yoga mat,
face down on the garden’s edge, staring at a pansy through my camera,
I was startled to hear a small yet deep voice whisper to me,
“Hey. listen to me!” And you either believe in fairies, or you do not,
and I do, and I said, “hey, what are you? Are you a fairy?” And the pansy
quivered in the wind, shivered a bit, and turned to me, and said, “well,
I am a death fairy.”
Nobody would expect that, I said.
Heh-heh, she said. They all think I wear a black cloak and carry a scythe.
They never expect a pansy. People just love to be dark and gloomy.
So what is the point? Am I doing to die?
No, no, don’t be small, said the voice, louder now, more confident but still a whisper.
Are you here because of Izzy?
Yes, she said, that is what I do. Sorry, but you know…
Yes, I know. Was it really his time? I asked.
Oh, yes, that is not your problem, she said. Nobody ever thinks it’s their time.
But hey, I’m here for you, she said.
Ventilate, if you wish. We care what you think.
You are, after all, lying in the garden, she said. You and your photos! A bit obsessive.
She sighed. Where are you with all of this? she said. Sad, I sad, a bit sad. A bit of a fog.
And? she whispered, so softly I had to put my hear to the garden soil.
Ready to move on, I said. Ready to move on.
I love my life, and just want to live it. Until you come for me.
Heh-heh. Let’s not go there.
So sing it with me, she said. Then live your life. And her voice took on a high piping pitch.
Who do you like? she asked.
I like Aretha, I said.
Okay, I can do Aretha, she said. Let’s do it in E-flat. And so we did.
Lying in the garden. Me and the pansy death fairy.
Move on, move on, move on. Five or six choruses.
The dogs moved to the other side of the yard.
And then the purple pansy shivered again, and turned yellow,
and then fairy was gone. Perhaps.
Been stalking this tulip in the morning, closing in with my 100 mm.
