She ran with amazing speed to beat
me to the gate, stood in an aikido
stance, weight even-balanced, feet
placed for the fade toward or away.
Hunch, I said with admiration, what’s
your game?
“Puck”, she explained, I’m in training for
the match that will take me to the top
of the pen. Want to see my koshinage?
Not right now. When? Tomorrow, or
the day after that. Fine, I’ll practice.
I was left to ponder the how and why
of her wondrous change. A Sussex hen with
ambition, yes, but tuned to an aggression
honed on the slighted uke movement,
countering that with a nage technique in
the blink of an eye. I looked to the east,
there in the sky the answer hung; a hunter’s
moon. Hunch was in the throes of an ancient
game, driven by imperatives of flight or fight;
boding well for her rise to fame she’d chosen
right in my view to claim an ascendency in the
pen’s chain of avian command. She winked,
warily, “Puck”, she said again.
© 29 April 2007, I.D. Carswell
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