Chicken-Neck Poem by Ravinder Kumar Soni

His head held high
The strutting bird
Surveyed the field
He did nothing else.
To save his eyes
He did not gaze
At the mid-day sun,
As always, the hen
Would wait for him;
He did not need
A vast vocabulary
To convince them
Or himself about the next
Sunrise and fanfare,
He could never be a poet
To cry hoarse about pain
Present and future.
As he bowed low
Over the pond
To admire his large comb
A hand lifted him
By the neck,
He did not feel anything afterwards.