Fowl ancestor

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Jungle fowl calls in strident voice,

demanding sunrise and sunset,

impatiently clicking spurred heels.

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Head held high, voice slicing the sky,

night-dark feathers proudly preened,

gleaming tough metallic tints.

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Boasting of brushes with tigers,

meals of cruel clawed insects,

the salty eyes of long-dead fish.

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Crowing for red revolution,

shouting for pride and jungle-law,

rebellion and rule of the roost.

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But huddled in cages, pale bred to endless appetite for cereals,

panting on fat thighs in sun battered, blood-splattered market places,

his descendants do not hear or heed but stare dead-eyed into nothingness,

boasting only soft white meat and pale efficient feed conversion.

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