end of summer and chickens!
ESSAY FOURTEEN: "LIFE IN A COOP"
We want the seeds. The bag you dig into.
We know it's day because the light, now, is here. Because he sings. Do you hear? The call is loud, and then the echo of his song.
Welcome to the day.
Welcome to another precious day.
AFTERTHOUGHTS
I'm returning from my residency in Tennessee. The cabin where I lived for two weeks was a former chicken coop. The fact of this felt aligned for me, a surprise as I've been working on a novel for the past eight years about a young woman who was raised on a chicken farm. How much closer could I get to a chicken than to sleep where they once did? Just a quarter mile down a trail from me was their new home, and in the mornings I heard the rooster's call echo through the holler, where the cabin was situated. For those unfamiliar with the word in this context, like me, a holler is a narrow valley or creek, a common topography in Appalachia. Sounds amplify here. One yell--one true holler--emboldens on this land.
Simply put, it was a wonderful place to work.
To wake early. To create. To rest.
On one of my days off, another resident living in the main farmhouse drove us to a farmer's market where I bought heirloom tomatoes for $1 and a loaf of fresh sourdough bread, which I made the next day for breakfast with scallion and avocado grits.
Being in this space, I experienced a deep quiet I hadn't felt in a long time. I was able to finish several projects that had been coming together slowly over the years.
After my first week, I read new poems in downtown Knoxville and we raised money for Planned Parenthood. It was the first time I read these poems to the public, and the first time I've read in person in over three years.
I missed the audience, that essential other part of a piece of the writing life. The audience who is also the reader, also who makes the work alive. To hear laughter, to make eye contact after a difficult line, to know there are others out there. Others who love the written word, who gather around sound.
READING LIST: CHICKENS
This week I'm thinking about chickens, so the suggested reading I have is actually not a book at all but a guide for foragers who want to be able to identify chicken of the woods, a delicate mushroom that is a perfect substitute for chicken in dishes and exists wild among the trees. Here is a link.