Age has caught her
with its grasp.
Long reaching fingers
of time
poke her joints.
They ache
though spring has
come
and gone
and summer sun
drips from the leaves
to her crowning glory
no longer what it
was;
the gloss worn away
by time’s
wind and rain and
dust.
Some days she barely
moves
– too much effort
to go beyond the
doors
they open every morn’
freeing her from
night’s safe prison.
Once she ran like the
young ones,
revelled in sunshine,
laid every day.
Now, her perch is too
high,
her nest a barren bed
she needs help to
rise from.
She’s an old girl in
the brood,
watching the sun set
over a full hen’s
life,
gold to pink,
to amber,
to black star-studded
night.
© Palitja Moore, text and image, updated 2019.
