Arlene Weiner: An Oven Bird (with apologies to Robert Frost)

We’d eaten quite as much as we were able
of the brown bird that stood mid-meal, mid-table.
We’d carved and passed it. Some had taken seconds,
and when we pushed our chairs back we’d not reckoned
the aftermath. On Friday we had lunch
of white-meat sandwiches with mayonnaise;
Saturday Waldorf salad, nuts for crunch;
next dark meat and mushrooms in a salmi. Days
passed while desperately, thriftily, we cleft
the carcass for soup, used bits up in souffles,
then sandwiches again, and still some’s left.
The bird came once to dinner and it stays.
Maybe croquettes? or turkey a la king?
Oh, what to make of an undiminished thing?

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copyright 2014 by Arlene Weiner