Chicken Pig

It’s like being lost

in the forest, hungry, with a

plump live chicken in your cradling

arms: you want to savage the bird,

but you also want the eggs.

You go weak on your legs.

What’s worse, what you need

most is the companionship,

but you’re too hungry to know that.

That is something you only know after

you’ve been lost a lot and always,

eventually, alit upon

your bird; consumed her

before you’d realized what

a friend she’d been, letting you

sleep-in late on the forest floor

though she herself awoke

at the moment of dawn

and thought of long-lost

rooster voices quaking

the golden straw. She

looks over at you, sleeping,

and what can I tell you, she loves

you, but like a friend.

Eventually, when lost

in a forest with a friendly chicken

you make a point of emerging

from the woods together,

triumphant; her, fat with bugs,

you, lean with berries.

Still, while you yet wander,

you can not resist telling her

your joke:

Guy sees a pig with three legs,

asks the farmer, What gives?

Farmer says, That pig woke

my family from a fire, got us all out.

Says the guy, And lost the leg thereby?

Nope, says the farmer,

Still had all four when he took

a bullet for me when I had

my little struggle with the law.

Guy nods, So that’s where

he lost his paw? Farmer shakes

it off, says, Nah, we fixed him up.

A pause, guy says, So how’d he lose

the leg? Farmer says, Well, hell,

a pig like that

you don’t eat all at once.

Chicken squints. Doesn’t think

it’s funny.