Tomorrow… in The House on The Hill

A gaseous cloud balloons above the rows of flagpoles
whose stays clang ominously in a wing-fed breeze.
The sky domes expectantly - a pregnant pause. A change is coming.
Thunder barrel-rolls the valley floor. Cockatoos screech -
a thousand of them wheeling in and encircling the house.

In The House, in the sumptuously upholstered room with the 
richly grained wooden paneling, the humans are having another pillow war. 
Feathers fly like so many tax dollars. The Speaker is screeching - 
a one-sided cat fight - but above the biff and throng it is just a soprano din.

The feathers form a helix, an organised swirl,
looking momentarily like a dragon but then,
coalescing into a giant hen - white and fat as a mouldy orange.
She squats broodily on the red leather table-top
muttering and fluffing and preening her wings.
The humans stand back, uncertain, until
quite suddenly, she lays a magnificent golden egg
set about with tiny gilded mirrors so that when (as soon happens)
they all rush in to grab it, they each see
images of their own salivating desperation.

Swift pecks to each of their foreheads and the humans retreat,
cowed by the mother's fury,  each forehead beaded with delicate blood.
Heads bowed, they siphon sinuously from the room, 
crooning and sad, eyes cast down to the red, red floor.
The enormous egg rumbles and vibrates until the tiny mirrors
crack and the gold shell quivers into trembling segments.
From the egg rolls a velveteen banner with the words

"Under this government science was dying of sad neglect.
We're rolling out magic to keep you hen-pecked.
From here on in, we go by evidence and merit,
so that our children will have something to inherit."