Sunday Dinner​

Issue 17

Did you hear about the chicken who wouldn’t
cross the street? No joke.
 
Some said it was a midlife crisis.
Others called it civil disobedience.
 
The chicken didn’t call it anything.
The chicken just stood there
 
gazing at the horizon, seeing through
the illusion of places to go.
 
The chicken withdrew to a corner of the henhouse
to think about things.
 
All this mindless scratching and pecking
and laying of eggs and then
 
one day the universe wrings your neck,
tosses you into a pot?
 
The chicken started reading Eckhart Tolle
and Sri Ramana Maharshi
 
Traded her nest for a meditation cushion
and asked Who am I?
 
She realized she was not the feathers
Farmer Jones would pluck
 
nor the wings or thighs or gizzard
on Farmer Jones’ dinner table
 
nor a wishbone, nor the liver a haruspex
reads to divine the future.
 
She realized she was not, as she’d thought,
even a chicken at all.
 
No, she was the abiding awareness
emerging in the moment.
 
A great weight dropped from her breast
and she knew peace.
 
And on the day Farmer Jones’
hand grasped her feet
 
and his thumb and forefinger
circled her head
 
she commended her spirit to the ever-present
and eternal now.
 
That night, Farmer Jones’ family
enjoyed the best Sunday dinner ever
 
and an angel perched in the vasty deep
emitted a joyous cluck.

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Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in many magazines and in Mike’s book, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic (Rabbit House Press). A second poetry collection (Before the Fall, Kelsay Books) and a debut novel (Food Court, Main Street Rag) are forthcoming in 2026. Mike lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

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