In the mornings I splash milk into my coffee mug and walk, barefoot, across the stone path to the chicken coop.

I sit on an upended clay pot (my throne) and watch as the young pullets kick and scratch and poke their beaks into the same old dirt.

For months I’ve found myself doing the same, going over and over tired ground.

Since the pandemic, I’m like my chickens. Stuck inside, I find myself sifting through over-picked brain material, my thoughts ruminating, enclosed in a singular pen, my own cramped hen house.

Last night the rain brought a deep drench to the run. A leafy chicken mulch smorgasbord. The water brought new material to the surface for the girls to mull over. A bright grain of corn, the squiggle of a green worm, the measured drink of brown water.

It blows my mind how content they are to retread the same small patch over and over. They see the miniscule changes to the earth, fresh bugs, mildewed straw, whatever gets churned up. A cicada!

I love that these fluffy dunderheads are so simply satisfied and able to keep a gimlet eye on the moment.

It’s nothing truly new, or interesting even, it’s just a focused gaze.

But the single grain is nourishment, a kernel of sustenance. A cluck, a breath, a hustle into the morning sunshine.

It’s like my writing. There’s this inward and outward vista, always a choice, always available.

There are days I can go so deep in memory and reflection, one nibble of detritus at a time. Other days I’d prefer the nesting box, a nap, a forgetting.

But chickens remind you of survival, they’re little dinosaurs. And I share this too – the inherited instinct to keep scratching, to keep hunting and pecking. I’m built to cluck and fuss and find my little strut.

My sister says chickens are stupid – “bird-brains” – after all, and in a way she’s right. But they’re prehistoric, built to survive, which is more than I can say about our species at the moment.

Anyway, it’s not Man against Nature out here today, but it’s what I do. I write. I pick at the neglected patches of dusty yard, weedy and dry.

I tell myself, this chicken yard has just enough wildness and disorder to make stuff grow, even chickens.