With eagle intrepidity, she eyes
The pole that slants from gatepost to the ground,
Stretches a wing in arrogant surmise,
And then, defiantly, as if she frowned
At danger, ventures up the pole with most
Precarious balancings with claw and feather
Till she attains the summit of the post,
A vaster altitude, a loftier weather.
She pauses there an instant, plump with pride,
Then flaps to outer earth where no grass grows.
Shelter and corn are on the other side,
But she, demurely clucking, only knows,
With chicken-headed pertinacity,
Fences are for escaping and she is free.
–Saturday Evening Post, 1947?
–republished in Halfway Up the Sky