She loved palmetto bugs,
medjool dates with legs that wiggled,
a treat gobbled between cracked corn
and milo.
She overturned plastic cups
in search of snacks we captured
just for her. Split-second beak darting,
roaches disappeared with a jerk.
Then with plowshares alchemy
her body turned crawling things
into brown eggs for our breakfast;
grains and grasses, too, remixed
inside the same hot belly
that pressed into the palm of my hand
when I held her to calm
her cackled complaints,
stroking the jewel-black
feathers of her neck
just to feel the squawk subside to a gurgle.
We eat neither fowl nor hemiptera
but some omnivore made a meal
of our darling, ravaged her plump gleam
to a grimy dishrag,
dug a moon out of her middle
so that she hung in concave
segments from my husband’s hands
with her premature egg left in the grass
a few paces away
translucent and white as an angel.