“Our Lady of the Hens”
Mixed Media: Monoprint, ink, watercolor, collage, and memories of the warmth and weight of a newly laid egg.* (Inspired by the poem below.)

They made their way through the early morning yard
like women picking produce at a farmer’s market.

Stepping carefully
in the damp grass, and hitching their skirts up,
they sniffed and clucked
over the choices before them –
over a new day mixed with leftover particles of night
that had settled with mercurial beauty
into the wet muddy red clay of the garden.

Remnant dreams, moonlight sighs,
stray memories of bodies curved together in sleep with tender heaviness
and sweet fat fleshy oranges lay together –
ripe, split and golden. Waiting to be tasted.

© martha lee phelps

* “Our Lady of the Hens” is a sister-piece to “She Gathers”