Hens
For millennia, poets have tried to describe the animals in their lives. Some of the most famous verses concern a particular creature—wild or adorable or filthy or dignified—closely observed. Take Elizabeth Bishop detailing the shallow, yellowed eyes of her caught fish; Mary Oliver looking up at wild geese sweeping across the sky; D. H. Lawrence tenderly cheering on a baby tortoise, “a tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.