by James Sands
She wasn’t quite a raven,
not even as close as a crow;
she was actually just a black chicken,
her people gave her the name Poe.
From the start, she was not like the others,
all Browns and Rhode Island Reds,
nor was she much like the Raven,
who lived in the pines past the fence.
The raven who’d lost his one love
to boys who’d done what they shouldn’t
two ravens had perched on a bough,
one flew, the other one couldn’t.
A sorrow, which Poe could not know,
observed from the shade of the trees,
while she, alone in the yard, watched
the others scratch for insects and seeds.
They cackled, and scolded, and clucked,
“Stay away, she is not one of us.”
“She’s flighty, and wild and thin, and her feathers
are all ashes, midnight, and dust.”
Poe sometimes did dash about
in sudden and furious flapping;
she’d beat the air with her wings
catching random winds in their passing.
Her greatest wish was to soar
over the tops of the trees in flight,
but she was an earth-bound chicken,
and the bonds of this earth are tight.
One dusk the raven’s lone caw
stirred the silent shade in the pines,
as a fox crept under the fence,
one hen yet remained outside.
Poe looked for one last chance
for flight at the end of her day;
the fox caught Poe’s silhouette
and quickly went loping her way.
Sorrow then flew from the trees,
faster and faster she went;
the fox closed in upon Poe,
as she flapped for her final ascent.
The fox snapped a foxy-toothed grin,
but the jaws closed only on wind,
as sorrow began to transcend,
Poe took flight in the end.
She wasn’t quite just a chicken,
and maybe more than a crow,
but it’s said she’s been seen with a raven,
the flying black chicken named Poe.
*This poem originally appeared in the collection of children’s poetry Why the Moon Tumbled Out of the Sky by James Sands, illustrated by Ronan Sands.