A Letter to my Chooks - by Barbara Temperton

When Barbara Temperton and I read at The Gods in Canberra, as mentioned here December 14, I read A Letter to My Chooks as a challenge to the audience to 'pick' which poem was by Barbara and not by myself. You with me so far? I promised to display it, so here it is - a crackerjack poem, one of a series of chook poems at her blog. 

Please don’t poop on the doormat.

When you wake at 4am –

and the moon floats

on a luminous cloud –

please don’t practise the lyrics

of your favourite songs.

My aspidistra was placed outside

for sunshine – not for you.

Your menu consists of laying pellets,

kitchen scraps and wheat.

The seat, my seat, situated outside

the front door, catches the first

of the morning’s rays. I enjoy

coffee and newspaper in that chair.

Please inform the rooster, the cocky one

with the crooked spur, not to perch there –

evidence is difficult to discover in the dark.

Yours faithfully seems a token gesture

when my fine new boots, and Levi’s , are wet

and pegged on the clothes line

in the moonlight.

I’ll mail this letter in the morning –

nail it, in fact – with recipes for à la King

and cacciatore, to the handle of the blunted,

rusted axe leaning against the woodshed door.