It doesn’t pay to be to smart
if you’re a chicken.
For what you’d learn
would break your heart,
if you’re a chicken.
That painful push to lay that egg
to have it fried for breakfast.
The gentle brooding of those chicks,
raised for suppers soup.
She’d know that coop’s
no warm safe place
if she could read
the farmers face.
It’d lucky for the chicken
her brain is small
or she’d know the fate
that awaits us all.
Poems by Ken 