Chicken Cosmology
Poem - by Richard Schiffman
Neither the chicken, nor the egg,
(since you asked). What came first was
the coop-free emptiness, the chickenless void.
Next came a beak for pecking, followed by a tongue
for tasting, a gullet for swallowing, eyes for seeing,
legs and wings for fleeing all that is not-chicken,
and an anus to excrete it. Then came the chicken brain
for dividing the world into chicken-friend and chicken-foe.
Finally the humans arrived (at once both friend and foe)
to feed the chickens and clean their pens and collect the eggs,
and wring an occasional chicken neck. The humans thought
that they came first, but the chickens knew that the humans
were after the eggs, which were before the chickens
(which hatched from them). But also after the chickens
(that laid them). Which for humans is a conundrum.
But not for chickens, who never bother to ponder
which came first. Because every chicken knows full well
that she came first, since everything in a chicken’s
universe is herself, not excluding the road,
(which, since you asked) the chicken
crosses to get to her better side.