Passing a Truck Full of Chickens at Night on Highway Eighty
What struck me at first
was their panic.
Some were pulled by the wind from moving
to the ends of the stacked cages,
some had their heads blown through the bars –
and could not get them
in again.
Some hung there like that — dead –
their own feathers blowing, clotting
in their faces. Then
I saw the one that made me slow some –
I lingered there beside her for five miles.
She had pushed her head
through the space
between the bars – to get a better view.
She had the look of a dog in the back
of a pickup, that eager
look of a dog
who knows she’s being taken along.
She craned her neck.
She looked around, watched
me, then
strained to see over the car – strained
to see what happened beyond.
That is the chicken
I want to be.
“Passing a Truck
Full of Chickens at Night on Highway Eighty” by Jane Mead from her book
The Lord and the General Din of the World published by Sarabande Books.
