Everyone’s happy, catching candy.
There’s an army truck, one fire truck
screaming, a blue Olds about 1975;
two police cars side by side,
everything huzza-huzza;
the band playing “From the Halls of Montezuma”
from a flatbed truck; eight kids on bikes,
with balloons; a dozen 4-H kids in clover shirts;
a bulldog with a bow;
two hefty rodeo girls on horses;
a small tractor pulling prizewinning chickens
in their two festooned cages.
I can’t help it, I get sentimental tears.
Damn, I say to myself. Chickens.
A prize for being chickens.
Then, amazingly, here they all come again,
back up the street, chickens
from the other side,
fiddle players instead of horns showing,
candy flying again like stars.
Everything a copy of itself, another chance.
Quantum physics says it’s true,
particles coming and going.
The road not taken may be taken.
Meanwhile the chickens move forward
again in our eyes, the Declaration of Independence
gets signed. We need custom,
return. We like to sit sandal-footed in the grass,
happily surrendered to either side.
Past or future, it’s no wonder
the chickens win, the way they keep
their artist’s eyes cocked, lost in the work
of being chickens
again and again.