My Blue Hen
by Ann Gray
I sing to my blue hen. I fold her wings
against my body. The fox has had her lover,
stealing through the rough grass,
the washed sky. I tell her, I am the blue heron
the hyacinth macaw. We have
a whispered conversation in French. I tell her
the horse, the ox, the lion, are all in the stars
at different times in our lives. I tell her there are
things even the sea can’t do, like come in when
it’s going out. I tell her my heart is a kayak
on wild water, a coffin, and a ship in full sail.
I tell her there is no present time,
an entire field of dandelions will give her
a thousand different answers. I tell her
a dog can be a lighthouse, a zebra finch can
dream its song, vibrate its throat while sleeping.
I tell her how the Mayan midwife sings each child
into its own safe song. Tonight, the moon holds back
the dark. I snag my hair on the plum trees. I tell her
I could’ve been a tree, if you’d held me here long enough.
I stroke her neck. She makes a bubbling sound,
her song of eggs and feathers. I tell her you were
a high note, a summer lightning storm of a man.
From The Moth Magazine (Issue 20, Spring 2015). Reproduced with kind permission from The Moth Magazine.
Forward Prizes for Poetry
Shortlisted for Best Single Poem 2015
About Ann Gray
Ann Gray always knew she wanted to write poetry: “I felt I was able to say more. There was a space inside the poem which I rarely found in prose.”
The author of a number of collections including Painting Skin (Fatchance Press, 1995) and The Man I Was Promised (Headland, 2004), Ann was commended for the National Poetry Competition 2010 and won the Ballymaloe Poetry Prize in 2014.
Her studies for an MA in Creative writing from the University of Plymouth led to her collection of poems about the sudden loss of her partner, At The Gate (Headland, 2008). ‘My Blue Hen’ is one of many written since that publication, which, she says, “prove” she was not finished with those poems.
She describes it as “a love song and a spell” and was inspired by the experience of moving her poultry to a safer place after a fox attack: “Although I was weeping with fatigue from walking up and down the hill, I found myself singing to console her, to console myself.”
