Chickens

One of the differences for me of life in the country is the time. I know there is the same amount of time everywhere, but there seems to be more here. More space. In general I am not especially mindful or meditative but I like the space to hear people, and the space to think about what they said.

Every Sunday we drive to the Preston Hollow flea market.

That sentence is wildly imperfect.  FLEA MARKET should be  an emphatic

typeface indicating how high it is on the Big List.

I am the opposite shopper of those who go

for Something Specific. A Blue Dress for instance.  Yesterday

after Preston Hollow we kept going  visited an old barn

we’d seen last summer. The owner

appealing woman  late eighties dressed in Sunday red was finishing

her two table puzzle.   “I had forty chickens across

the street,” she began. “Forty. Every single one of them had a name.

One day I was crossing to feed them and I got hit by a truck.

OK my kids said. Enough chickens. They sold my chicken barn with

all the chickens inside. I started collecting chickens at the flea

market. Can you believe I have twelve hundred chickens now.

In my bedroom upstairs. Roosters are next a customer in here said.

He was wrong.”