The Henhouse
My eyes, burning with ammonia
Have seen things that my sisters have not;
A vast blue expanse,
Godlike in my mind -
The sky.
Is it a crime to want such a pleasure again?
Days come and days go -
I don't know what they are anymore.
The light is constant,
Thrumming above from sterile lines,
And I can't see outside
To distinguish day from night.
These wings that have few feathers now,
Shuffled, scuffed and rubbed,
Edge out wistfully -
I have heard of flying,
But even stretching is unknown
To these beaten limbs.
A fight breaks out again -
Caged together with no space to roam,
There is nothing to do but fight.
I wish sometimes
That we could be like my nestmates were,
Preening each other
As friends, not rivals
In this hell they call a life.
And I wonder,
Why are we here?
Why us?
What have we done?
When will we die?
There is no hope of escape now.
I close my eyes away from the burn
And imagine once again
The sky.
posted by Avian Mooch, or a Really Angry Cow @ 8:36 AM
2 Comments:
I feel like I can't see the sky until these hens are free. The dark ammonia dust circles the globe.
I feel like I can't smell the flowers while until these innocent faces are free. The blackness of slaughter pollutes our lives.
"And I wonder,
Why are we here?
Why us?"
No reason. No comprehensible reason.
"What have we done?"
Nothing.
What have we done?
Thank you for writing on behalf these gentle animals, the most abused creatures in the history of the planet. Your compassion through your words is beautiful and much appreciated.
Thanks, Gary. Right on. As long as one of us is enslaved, none of us are free.
To all you that may be reading this, the truth is that this layer hen written about in this poem will see the sky again. She will see it from the holes of a truck taking her on a grueling journey to slaughter that is devoid of food and water while she and all her sisters are crushed together. She will smell the corpses of some of those sisters because they couldn't survive the journey, often days long without stop, without food or water.
When she gets to the slaughterhouse, she will be thrown into a contraption designed to hold her still by her legs. The slaughterhouse workers will stun her, but only enough to keep her conscious, and she will have her throat slit while she is completely aware of it and unable to cry out. If she's one of the unlucky ones, the knife will miss and she will be dropped into a tank of boiling water designed to loosen her feathers from her skin and be scalded alive. She may not die from burns. She may die from drowning instead.
But one thing is certain: for her, death will be a release.
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