THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING OF OHIO

Dawn. Two roosters stud the side of the road.

One of them is dead. The other stands there

Stiff in the car’s sudden breeze, staring out

Across the hilly Ohio highway,

Skyward towards that something slight of bright

Reds and pinks, a pallid rooster-feathered

Hue, as silent as the rooster standing

And as distant as the rooster on its side.

We drove by, my guide and I, too quickly

To know if one rooster was waiting for

The other, or which had been waiting—,

Or if they’d planned to cross the road together

When suddenly something went terribly wrong,

Either at the end of having crossed it

Or simply, as happens, during the wait.

The whole Ohio highway seemed to know, though,

Like the gate of Heaven you see at death

(As a light or a shining shunning darkness)

Knows Heaven without actually being

Heaven, being rather just a border,

Still part of our plausible world

Of parts, living and dead, male and female,

Color and color, belief and belief …

There’s really no reason to believe or

Not to believe what you see when you see it.

But when at speed I saw those two roosters

Trying to figure out what’s next for them

As the distances we traveled on the

661 swallowed them whole with wheat,

I looked from my passenger’s seat into

The car’s rearview mirror, and saw nothing

That was neither Heaven nor Ohio

As the horses stirred, and the steeples slept,

And the state flattened out like a mirror.

And am I not a mirror for that mirror?