Thirteen Days of Looking at the Blacktop

      I

Amid twenty frozen freeways,
The only moving things
Were the feet of the chicken.

      II

My mind revolved this mystery,
Like a rotisserie
On which there were three chickens.

      III

Why the chicken crossed the road
Is like twenty questions or a pantomime.

      IV

A man and a woman
Are a riddle.
A man and a woman and a chicken
Are a limerick.

      V

I do not know which to prefer,
A chicken crossing the road
Or sauteed, with some pie a la mode—
The circumambulation of the pullet
Or its circumnavigation of my gullet.

      VI

Finicky picnickers filled a big Winnabago
With wicker totes.
The presence of the chicken
Wafted here and there.
No road
Seemed like the last road.
Everyone was peckish.

      VII

O travelers of the macadam,
Why try to divine an avian mind
When the breasts and thighs of the chicken,
Along with rolls and macaroni,
Inhabit your hampers?

      VIII

I know mobile diversions
And jejune automobile games,
And I know
Why the chicken crossed the road,
But I'm not telling.

      IX

When the chicken walked out of sight,
It marked the end
Of one more stanza.

      X

At the sight of chickens
Crossing against a yellow light
Even the most continent traffic guards
Will ululate uncontrollably.

      XI

Once he ran over a chicken
In his SUV.
He was caponed with amazement,
In that how a chicken
got into his SUV, he never knew.
That's a different enigma.

      XII

The chicken is missing.
It must be those damned blackbirds.

      XIII

They'd wanted breakfast all day.
So, for dinner, they ate breakfast.
After bacon, eggs and a dish of rocky-road,
They decided,
To hell with the chicken.

© Frank Osen

The Idea of Crossing Highway 9

He crowed beyond the brilliance of the road.
The asphalt never curved to breast or brag
Like a crosswalk safely crosswalk, marking
Its safety zone; and yet the traffic moving
Made constant roar, caused constantly a roar
That was not his, although we often joked,
Befowled was the crossable highway.

The road was not a coop. No more was he
The cooped and kept. His song was sound
Even if what he crowed was warning,
Since what he warned was dopplered in the wind.
It may be that in all his exclamations stirred
The churning traffic and the diesel fumes;
But it was he and not the road we heard.

For he was the wakened cock of the morning.
The ever-trafficked, traffic-jammed road
Was merely a place by which he woke to crow.
Whose alarm is this? we asked because we felt
It was the alarm we ought to hear and heed;
That we should feel this often as he warned.

If it were only the thick sound of the street,
That called, or even drew the traffic on;
If it were only the inner voice of the land
And fields, of the fallow, stubble laden fields
However bleak, it would've been thin air,
The laden echoes of summer air, a thinner sound
Incessant on a highway without end
And noise alone. But it was less than that.
Less even than his crow, and yours, among
The purposeful crossings of crosswalks and streets,
Mappable distances, moving shadows pressed
On dark pavement, oil stained pavement
Of road and way.

          It was his voice that cocked
Our ear, alarmed us to the speeding.
He cocked the hour its doodle.
He was the single fertilizer of the land
On which he shat. And when he shat, the land,
Whatever plant it held, embraced the dung
That was his dung, for he was the rooster. Then you,
As you beheld him strutting there alone,
Sensed that he would cross the livid road
To spread his crow and crap across the world.

Harlan Sanders, tell me, if you dare,
Why when the crowing ended and we turned
Toward the shoulder, tell how the feathered breast,
The comb on the rooster's head lay severed there,
As trucks approached it, still crowed in air
And marked our own betrayal like the sun,
Rising, lighting, baking the chicken in its heat.

Oh! Chicken dressed to order, old Harlan.
The rooster's rage to cross roads like the sea,
King of the fragrant coop, pungent coop,
And of our cars, and of our appetites,
In poultry incarnations, fouler sounds.

© D. W. Clark