Dear May,

 

Dear May,

 

Today already a great clear sky & cloudless

wide wide beside the mountain.  Yesterday I

was remembering that William Carlos Williams

poem, his So Much Depends, you know the one,

 

because I saw those white chickens, four of them,

pecking in the grass, their red combs flapping,

happy in their cracking open the thaw of sod

& all there waiting like daughters congregating:

 

small wriggling things on pause all winter long.

Still in shock probably, they won’t recognize their

transformation from mossy bed to squeeze box

belly.  The birds were not beside a red wheel

 

barrow.  & if there was a bucket I didn’t see

it though it had rained & there was a glaze

if it some place near.  They were beside

the purple house – remember the one? An almost

 

flock of them, all business like in their tight white

maxi dresses, oblivious & content & briefly free, 

before being needed by their Chanticleer who is

off on his own & bragging to absolutely no one.