Two Poems by Abbie Kiefer

Two Poems: Abbie Kiefer

Coop with Buff Orpingtons

When my kids were smaller and liked coloring together, I specialized in landscapes: evergreens clustered under a yellow-coin sun, untroubled clouds outlined in blue. Cumulus—the kind that dissolve by day’s end. I’d crayon them in big puffs, same way I’d draw sheep, pillowed and cuddlesome. Real clouds are only damp air and the fleece of a sheep is stuck through with hay, but my hands want to make comfort. I have a photo of myself at five beside a ewe, patting the air above her matted back. My face says Even this is too close and the image is washed out and grainy in a way that makes it seem prescient. I have a friend who keeps chickens. Teasing, she asks if I want to hold one. The Buff Orpingtons really do like to be held. They are untroubled. Learn to trust. This is her second flock, the first mauled by a neighbor’s Bullmastiff. When she heard the snarling and wail, she ran from the house to the yard, but not before slinging closed the curtains. Telling her kids to stay put. After, she had to explain what happened, but only once she’d raked the stained feathers from the dirt. Only once the kids chose new paint for the coop: yellow like the sun. Yellow as the chicks they were hatching in their basement from eight lamp-warmed eggs, the chicks puffed and soft, fracturing their way into the world.

Heliotropism

We put beans in clear cups to watch them unspool. Lengthen toward light. This is during the worst of the pandemic, when I homeschool the kids and teach them about living things: turtles and mushrooms and these mottled seeds that win us over. We give them a garden outside our window. It’s supposed to be a science lesson but I can only think magic: broad leaves from near-nothing and each plant seeking its pole, knowing how to tendril around it. To seek. To know.

I assign the vines agency. Awareness and choice. Make good choices I tell the kids when I want them to wear sunscreen without whining or pick up scattered Legos. When I take away Minecraft, I say Our choices have consequences.

They want to know what my consequences are. As a kid, I was once sent to my room for refusing our garden’s green beans. My mom wanted me to just try them. Wanted me to grow up healthy and grateful and aware there are rules. Even so, she gave up on legumes. We’ve all got to decide what merits care. Even today I won’t eat green beans, though the shelled ones I love. So maybe I turned out okay. What I’m turning out refuses to be quantified

except for these heirloom Good Mother Stallards with their six-seed pods, their stems trellising so densely

we can sit in their shelter. Let’s read a book here I say. Let’s see if we can call like birds. My kids tell me Later, running away with sticks, each insisting the other take the role of the bad guy. That autumn, they’ll be back at public school, which I’ll self-argue is safe enough, and I’ll cut the dried vines. Pop beans from cracked pods and end up with a palmful. Next season I’ll self-promise. More light, more tending. Better Good Mother Stallards.