Of Knotted Ties
The rooster knows
inside the white-washed walls
of a red-doored cottage
resides the bones of one long dead,
and the lovely baby Bonnie,
born to a father rendered mute by idleness.
“Take care of our Bonnie,” the Mother says,
as she leaves to make their living
in a city now close by train.
He’s not needed in mill or mine,
replaced by mechanical invention,
first muscle then mind, atrophied
while Mother is paid
to solve the problems of the inner city.
He lives in an inner city,
full of ambition and desire,
full of a warrior’s memory
and sport championships well earned,
as tarnished tin and ragged ribbons eloquently attest.
He wears them proudly on his vest.
Daily, he watches the Rooster from a window,
waiting as he does each day,
for Mother to come home
and fret and tsk, and relate how the world
has changed, “...and not for the better.”
He watches the Rooster,
peck the young male chicks without hesitation,
making make their eyes bleed,
and after blinding them,
dig his feathered fetlock claws
into their scrawny necks until they cease to struggle.
The Rooster is still master of the barnyard,
guilty ghastly crimes,
he still struts with authentic earnest.
The redundant man placed
around his throat the chain of slavery
that would ultimately set him free
in a Hereafterland of bygone accomplishment;
and the lovely Mother, found Bonnie
crawling ‘neath his swinging corpse,
hungrily chewing on a copper coin
that fell from the fingers of a forgotten Father.