When daily I amble
alongside the bramble,
I cheerfulIy ramble and roam.
I found, on a frolic,
a pasture bucolic
where chickens could rollick at home.

I’m restfully rosy
whenever I mosey,
and never with nosy intents.
But here I was stricken,
my pulse seemed to quicken:
a chicken had flown from the fence!

Unshakably shady
this avian lady
who’d fled her Arcadian sphere.

I felt like her shepherd,
repeatedly peppered
with thoughts of the jeopardy here.

My worriment heightened —
I fidgeted, frightened,
then earnestly tightened my brow.
I’d have to be callous,
or given to malice,
to plod from the palisade now.

I felt an attraction
to blind benefaction,
a summons to action, a draw.
A clucker can’t kick it
in treacherous thicket,
away from her picketed straw.

My pace was pursuant
to that little truant,
my movements were fluent and fleet.
I found it unfacile,
a hustle, a hassle,
but rassled the bird from her feet.

But once I could carry
that rover unwary
to join the agrarian corps,
I recognized, yonder,
a second absconder,
and near her there wandered some more!

Was I being brainless?
Could I ascertain less
to think it would painlessly cease?
Indeed, the plot thickens,
for surely, all chickens
should peck at their pickin’s in peace.

I witnessed them waggle,
that scandalous gaggle,
determined to straggle and stray —
then, harrowed, I hurried,
I scampered, I scurried;
the flocculence flurried that day!

I barreled, I bumbled,
I struggled, I stumbled,
I floundered, I fumbled, I fought.
It’s crazy to quarrel
with varmints sororal,
but surely immoral to not.

A dog at the border,
a worrisome warder,
observed my disorderly speed.
I screamed, “I’m your ally!
I’ll shepherd them, shall I?”
The gal I was chasing agreed.

And once I could hoist her
back into the cloister,
I bound for her boisterous kin.
With grimace and growl,
with strenuous scowl,
I ferried more fowl back in.

I hazarded, haggard
— but ne’er was I laggard —
and ere I had staggered away,
I’d brought to their sisters
a dozen resisters,
those turbulent twisters at bay.

I don’t mean to bluster.
I look for no luster.
A man has to muster his core.
It’s plainly apparent
that anyone errant
is someone you daren’t ignore.