To read Joyce’s visit to the West Chester Writers’ Conference
To read Joyce’s review of Nadya Aisenberg.
To read Joyce’s column on a critic’s poetry collection.
To read Joyce’s column on Stephen Burt and Michael Scharf in the PSA Panel on Criticism.
To read Perloff and Vendler Spar at PSA Panel on Criticism, part one of Joyce’s OBSERVATIONS
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A review by Joyce in Summer 2000 of Thomas O’Grady
More work by Joyce Wilson in Spring 2000
Observations: A Column by Joyce Wilson It was too late in the day to bury her. I put on plastic glovesandlowered her body by the feet into a large garbage bag. Then I twistedthe top of the bag and put the whole parcel into a galvanized pail witha cover. Before I secured the cover of the pail tightly, I heard a loudengine sound. Like a generator or a plane, the roaring announced itsdetermination to overcome some obstacle or limitation. I soon discoveredthat the noise was coming from inside the bag. I opened the top and outswarmed a cloud of buzzing angry flies. Their fury at losing theirrecently possessed home was frightening; they had made real plans to setup house in that chicken carcass for the duration of the cycle from eggto maggot to fly. If I had known what was in store for the followingday, I might have interpreted the buzzing of these escaping flies as anomen. In my mind, I returned to their angry sounds over the course ofthe succeeding weeks and wondered if I were becoming superstitious.
On the following day, September 11, I arrived home in the lateafternoon from teaching at Boston University and had to bury thedeceased chicken. It seemed fitting to have something to do. I had beenin my office when both planes hit the World Trade Center towers and didnot learn of the catastrophe until two of my students, sensing myignorance, stayed after my second class to inform me of the newsreports. I was able to proceed with the lesson plans of the day, andsoon, the university issued a letter condemning the attacks and urgingus all to go on as usual. Yet that afternoon, after watching thetelevised images of the third building collapse like a deflatingaccordion and the desperate office workers jump to their deaths from thesmoking windows, and my heart was smitten like grass, and withered(Psalm 102), digging a grave came as a welcome task. I went outside andset the shovel into the rich layer of humus down into the coarsegravelly subtexture of soil. I separated enough rocks and stones to makea kind of marker.
On September 24, our fifteen young chickens all suddenly cacklednervously. Their voices soon reached a clamor with their alarmedsquawking. I had been marking papers in the living room and ran outsidewhere I met a dog, a German shepherd mix, carrying a white bird in itsmouth. It dropped the bird at my feet and slunk off. I picked up the henwho was clearly in shock, with those eyes that registered the frozenlook of trauma, and put her in the barn. Then I busied myself withpreparations for her convalescence in our basement, lining a cage withstraw and gathering food and water containers. I went back to the barnand picked her up to take her to the new hospital accommodations, butwhere she had once been a plump sturdy being in my hands, holding herhead erect even though she was stilled from the shock of being carriedin the mouth of a dog, she was now soft and limp, and her body sagged insections, jointed like a bean bag. Her head hung toward the floor, asmall medallion at the end of her neck, now a lifeless stem. Even thoughI had seen the blood from her wounds on my shirt and the pile of whitefeathers in my neighbor’s yard, I had been hopeful that she would live.The change in her body as I held her in my hands transmitted itshorrible message of finality. There was no bringing her back.
It was five o’clock, and I buried her in the garden near theotherchicken. Our garden rows suddenly seemed like a grid of spacesdesignating a scheme of plots. That weekend my family celebrated thelong holiday and a number of October birthdays. Each of us had a storyto tell about where we had been when the planes struck the towers. Anaunt described a friend who worked in the emergency ward in one of theNew York City hospitals: “The staff was ready to work, and they hadnothing to do. No bodies arrived. They just sat there most of the day,doing nothing and feeling helpless.”
The dog came back on October 10. It spooked the chickens byrunning atthe fence so that they all flapped up against the netting and one grayone rose out over the top. As I ran around the corner of the house tothe back yard, I could hear the gray hen voice its protest as the dog’sjaws crushed its bones. This time I left the chicken, which was stillalive, and followed the dog to the playground where I confronted itsowner with the crime. By the time I returned, the gray chicken had died.I left her on the bench in the barn and called Kim, the Animal ControlOfficer, formerly the Dog Officer. She came the next day and observedthe chicken and interviewed my neighbor Mary who had seen both killings.I also called a cremating service for pets and recorded their rates.Seventy dollars to cremate a chicken; one hundred and twenty for burialplots. Kim said she would not enforce the town ordinance if I buriedthis chicken in the garden where I had buried the others. So, later thatday, I buried it.
For the next few weeks, my neighbors were concerned that thechickenswere flying out even when not frightened by some invader from anotherpart of town. “You might want to put a top on your chicken yard,” Kimsuggested. Mary was more emphatic: “Joyce, you’ve got to put a roof onthat fence!” That weekend the president announced that our country wasat war and was sending planes to bomb Afghanistan. Suddenly our liveswere in constant peril; suddenly some unity of action required, if not ablanket conformity of heart and mind, a method of containment. This wasthe return of the war mentality: if you’re not for us you’re against us.I understand that a concerted effort is necessary to defeat theterrorists, but I hate the suspicion and paranoia. Have I becomeaccustomed to leisures of peace? Now it seems that to be undecided is aluxury, and one that we can no longer afford.
Later that fall, I woke one morning to hear a chicken cacklingthe waythey often do to announce that an egg will soon be laid or an egg hasjust been laid, and I realized that the hen was audible from outside herhouse, which had been shut up for the night. This meant that she hadspent the night outside, when she should have been safe and secure withthe others inside. I realized that I had neglected to count the membersof the flock before I bolted the door closed. Feeling guilty andirresponsible, I went out, and there she was, behind the hen house,anxious to get back in. I had to herd her around the yard to usher herthrough the gate. As I walked past the woodpile, I noticed an egg on theground. Once she was inside the yard, I opened the house, and she joinedthe other chickens, who ran around, stretched their legs, their wings,and showed the energetic behavior of release into the morning andanother day. I went to collect the egg near the woodpile. It was warm. Afoot away, I found more eggs partially buried in the leaves. There weresixteen in all, and they were all warm! While our planes were droppingbombs on the Afghanistan desert and the young men of our community werejoining the National Guard, this chicken was stockpiling eggs in thewoods. I pictured her settling down at dusk, fluffing out her skirtswith her treasures securely underneath her. She was preparing for aconcentrated period of incubation, murmuring contentedly to herself, “Myeggs, my eggs.” Such broodiness is labeled a problem for a thrifty henyard, but I could not stop myself from taking pride at the symbolicdimensions of her act: she came, she nested, she nurtured.
I saved these eggs to set with bulbs I planted in front of thehedgesafter the frost began its work on the ground’s surface. I trust thatthey will provide a suitable fertilizer. Now, with the arrival of thesolstice, the hens are growing out of their adolescence and becomingmore complacent. They are heavier and no longer able to fly out over thefence, although the little gray hen continues to try. She seemsdetermined to lay her eggs in the woods, a mark of her independentspirit, her refusal to conform—it is consoling to anthropomorphize. IfI had a less strenuous schedule, I would enjoy spending more time withthis flock to observe their interpersonal relationships within thecommunal unit. Who gets along with whom? How do they share? Do they showsigns of compensation for individual excesses? What sacrifices does eachmake for the whole? If I had time, I would name each one. This littlegray hen has called up a friendship I remember from childhood. I verifythe choice by looking up the root meanings. The derivatives of the root“mel” are mild, also strength, and of the root “melit,” honey. As thesethings come to mind, strong, great, and honey-sweet, I think of her asMildred.
