finding feathers

I need to shed not feathers but thoughts

To find a feather, I once read, is to receive a message from someone we have lost; a feather has a meaning, if we can decipher it. In my garden, littering the lawn, a small scattering of feathers: mottled black and white. One, tiny, soft and curled, lifts in the wind. There has not been an avian atrocity—these belong to my hen Lola, who is moulting as …