by Jeff Burt
1
I knew a rooster
who had the largest nest egg
but without a hen
to sit upon the shell
it never hatched.
He had too much invested
in himself.
2
When I came to understand the pecking order
and that it didn’t matter how fast I ran
to the hand that gave out the seed,
I saw how the flock no matter how disparate
reconvenes into the same order
like people fill the picnic tables
at a reunion, except roosters,
they don’t sit at the table,
they stand in the back and wait
for seed to fall from other feathers.
3
Days snow comes
the rooster is first suspicious
of his tiny tracks.
When the sun comes
and the footprints expand
in the snow’s melting,
he brags of their size to his brethren.
4
I heard a fellow rooster saved a young girl
from an enraged dog
by landing on the dog’s back
pecking at its neck, or so the girl said.
Later that week
a unicorn appeared to her, too,
but I checked out that rooster.
Stuck in his beak,
he still had dog’s hair.
5
At the Chinese market
if you snare the privilege
of a tour in a room near the back
hens and young roosters
have nooses around their feet.
The young males, the guide says,
never stop trying to fly out,
peck to break the rope around their feet.
And old roosters, I ask.
There are never old roosters
here, he says.
6
Roosters never group as one,
call the cry of alarm all day
that dawn has come
until the sunlight fades.
They laugh, joke
that when one gets his head cut off
that he’s never run faster.
7
Roosters can crow.
Crows can’t rooster.
8
A stiff coxcomb
and a loose wattle
does not mean the hens
will congregate
when a hand and a bucket
talk. Kernels walk.
9
Roosters strut
in front of a fender
of a truck or a hubcap,
start a pecking fight
with bumpers and metal,
walk away like they’d won.
10
A child questions if a rooster
is a chicken. If a fox is asking,
the farmer whispers, always say yes.
photo credit: Ricardo Porto, Unsplash