When your parents came
to visit, outside the sliding
door window, pacing,

as if stretching
its non-existent calves,
was the neighbor's

chicken, walking in
circles on red brick,
pecking at the air

and the ground. I had
gone out in hopes of
catching it and escaping

from your mother's
pessimism and your
father's ramblings,

and, cornered against the
wall and the rose garden,
I thought I just

might have but it
had taken to flying,
barely, up the wall

and onto the neighbor's
roof, as if she'd
done it before

with wings much
bigger and more
human.