A Stipulation of Peafowl.

Clark, George David

   ... her appearance becomes shortly what it always will be.
  --Flannery O'Connor

 If a group of peacocks is,
 collectively, an ostentation, a flock of peahens might be better termed
a what? a penury? humiliation?
                         Even they, in sepias (but for their brief green
collars), backs matte gray with mottled underfeathers, preen and strut.
We may know that seven peahens in a shagbark is a pity, a brownout,
            but the four dusting themselves at length along the
driveway, let's call them
                                   a stipulation:
that vanity has never been reserved for classic beauties, that the body
wants to he a temple
                                    to no god hut itself.