CULLED (villanelle)
The birds’ souls are flying away today.
Sweetly called “cull” and it’s really the “kill.”
We do it to people too, sad to say.
Build fast, push deep, disease, and a grim reap.
The nations swarm and meet to call alarm.
But the greedy brains want more on the heap.
Can’t hug close any hens or fouls who lay.
They must be culled today down on the farm.
A child collects the oval sun to pray.
Before the machines and crowded frenzy.
Breakfast, birth, and death had real country charm.
Culls were tragic, private, and quite holy.
Viruses reap and kill our precious play.
Like war, they reap the soul of living harm.
Bodies in towers of deathly array.
Boy pecked by an egg settin’ hen one day.
Living souls flew out of the house to stay.
Culls were tragic, private, and quite holy.
Bodies in towers of deathly array.
Copyright 2022 by James Musgrave
