My son moves at the speed of consideration, doting over his chickens like an elder amongst youngsters he is not entirely certain all belong to him. He does know his favorites, though. Of the four roosters, he likes the larger of the two Jersey Giants for his gentility and the Barred Rock for his singing. He despises the Bantam for his meanness. The fourth rooster, who he neglects to mention, will be our Thanksgiving meal. Personality is essential to survival.
The passions of my eldest are grounded in the earth, the three-quarter acre we call home. The personalities of his chickens, fed from the soil he tends, are among them. He wears an Amish-style hat, for which we call him Farmer Brown, and it has affected his brain. Chief among the symptoms of this malady is an attentiveness to all things living, and small. And so, as he moves his wheelbarrow loaded with last fall’s decomposing leaves into the chicken run, he does so with care not to displace this or that hen pecking the ground, this or that rooster strutting for her affection. He moves at the speed of consideration for their little lives and patterns and, in so doing, offers up into the cosmos an act of kindness, however small. He is beautiful to me.
I watch him from the chair I have set by the fire ring in our yard. Foot-long scraps of rough-cut lumber, leftovers from the coop I built for his chickens, are stacked and scattered about my feet. With a hunting knife and mallet, I split them into stove wood. It is a piddling task, yet gratifying in that way of getting something done. To keep warm, and because I like the crackling sound of it, I throw about every twelfth piece onto the fire. The rest go onto the growing pile.
From a single tree, I cut and milled the boards. I built the coop to house the chickens. I split the scraps to feed the fire. I raised the son who tends the chickens who gift me eggs in the morning. How many times will I be grateful for this one tree? How many degrees of separation, breakfasts of scrambled eggs by a warm fire, will there be before we are no longer bound? Many and more, I hope.
I understand why the ancients worshipped the sun and asked for no promises after death. Why question what is obvious? All around I see the past rising from dark carbon into a green and sunny future. We are here but for a little while, raised and turned and laid back down like earth before the plow. In our moment under the sun, why should we want more than the beauty of that turning? Asking seems selfish.
Kindling split, knife sheathed, and mallet tossed carefully at my feet, I watch. My son’s wheelbarrow rests empty, propping the coop door, and I think about a William Carlos Williams poem I read long ago, when I was his age. How silly I thought it back then, and how inattentive I now know myself to have been. So much depends upon the red wheelbarrow, glazed with rain water, beside the white chickens. Yes, Mr. Willams, it does.
I wonder what future he will have. I do not believe, like so many, that technology will deliver us. I simply do not have the faith, or hubris, to make that leap. I wait for something ancient, primordial, and circular. A final heave upon the wall, slumping to the floor, finally ready to confess, “enough!” I await a bloody sire and the whittling of bone to quicken us toward redemption. It will be art, no less, in the end. A cave painting on the wall, and a story telling of great struggle. We will read it and wonder if there really are animals out over yonder, and go see. Then we will find it.
Tiny footsteps from behind. A tap on my knee. A small voice. Eyes that shine.
“Do you want to tell me a story?”
“Of course I do. Which one?”
“Horsey jumps. Dinosaur, dinosaur, dinosaur.”
So many things for which to be grateful. So much poetry under the sun.
About the Author:
Jake Forrest Lunsford writes his nonsense from the window overlooking his chickens, of which there were thirteen before the o‘possum. While hostage negotiations have thus far been unproductive, the remaining twelve are committed to the peaceful resolution of this conflict. The springer spaniel who sleep on the couch isn’t talking. To read more of his nonsense, visit https://jakeforrestlunsford.com/, or follow him on Instagram @jakeforrestlunsford.
