About a Chicken

Martha Meltzer

 

A two lane highway bisects town.

A.J.’s Bait and Tackle, Dew Drop Inn,

Sunshine Diner line dusty 128 East.

The IGA is cool inside. I buy a grape Nehi,

thumb through August’s issue of Life.

 

Next to Crown Valley Vet stands

Gary’s faded white clapboard house.

Paint chips from sills.

Curtainless windows look over a lawn

of weeds and dry grass.

 

A faded glider rests on the porch.

Behind it a clock shaped like a tea pot

hands stopped at 3:35.

I toss the empty pop bottle as I walk by. 

Behind the low chain link fence

an autumn brown chicken stops pecking.

She lifts her head, red comb snaps to attention, black eyes

bright and watches, watches as I walk down the road.

              


Martha Meltzer is a native Californian. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area where she writes by night and works as a children's librarian by day. She is the fifth Poet Laureate for her adopted home town of Pleasanton.

  

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