About a Chicken
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.