Processing

A sonnet on the occasion of processing my drake

This short edition of The Blue Scholar is a little off the beaten path of my usual fare, although not entirely unprecedented. I have once written a poem, and I have once written about having to kill a bird.

Today, I share a poem about having to kill a bird.

Some of you will know that my family has a small flock of chickens. Earlier this year, we diversified by adding ducks: three females. Or so we’d hoped. One got itself yoinked by a raccoon before we could get a firm read on its sex, the second was without doubt a hen, and the third ended up being a drake.

I grew up in the suburbs with nothing but dogs and cats, so last night, at thirty-five years old, was my first time properly processing a bird. If you read last year’s account of killing a rooster, you’ll know that there was little “proper” about it, including the fact that it wasn’t processed: it was dispatched and buried. But this one? Processed.

And as one does, I wrote a sonnet to process the processing. It is this that I share with you now in triplicate: once as an image of the poem in my hand, once in audio voiceover, and once typed out.

(My next installment in the Religious Shape of Trades Apprenticeships series should be published in the next few weeks.)

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Josef Woldemar Keller-Kühne, Ducks, 1950s, Oil on Canvas

Processing

Feathers -- for cov'ring your skin from the breeze,
     or letting you ride it, cutting through air --
Shield your skin likewise, preventing my ease.
     So lift them I must to lay thin neck bare,

As bare as my heart which in two strokes bleeds.
     Two strokes of wingbeat demands my heart's praise;
two strokes of knife's edge and that same heart grieves:
     two strokes and two wings end heart's beating days.

Your life is so dull, so beautif'ly round,
     dang'rous to no one. Thence cometh my strife,
my thanks, my sorrow. I lift up, press down,
     and with whispered prayer I take up my knife.

I'll do this but once, "Once only!" I cry.
In two strokes, but once, by my hand you die.

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P.S. The second duck that ended up being a hen? She’s gone to live with a friend who has a flock of ducks. It’s only chickens for me from here on out.