Gratitude
by Maury Barr

When I was living at the cabin and had chickens,
strange to snatch one out of the pen, butcher it:
the others would cluck around,
raise a momentary ruckus,
then go back to pecking in the dirt - their business;
as long as I wasn't taking them out, the chickens were fine;
they never "got it" that their turn would come.

I never once woke up to a committee of concerned
chickens at my back door with a petition
challenging my authority to take their lives.
I never saw signs of mounting insurrection -
small mounds of pebbles hidden under straw,
beak-sharpened slivers of wood in the nesting boxes.
They just went on laying eggs, going about their chicken business.
Eggs nor lives, nothing they gave me willingly -
and I was grateful for what I took.

Maury Barr: I was born in Georgia. Lived in Maine, Connecticut, Iowa, Berkeley, CA, Seattle. Have traveled a bit in South America and more in Europe (which is where I'm headed now). Stayed in college long enough to earn an MFA in writing from the Univ. of Iowa in Iowa City - Writer's Workshop. Studied with Marvin Bell, Donald Justice, Anselm Hollo, David Ray, Norman Dubie and Jack Marshall.

I've been writing and teaching at the community college in Colville for the past 16 years. Before that, I did many things - a few good things, too, I hope - and lived in many places; I was writing the whole time - since I was young and wondering what art and poetry is, and how you put the sky - or "a" sky - into a poem. Or do you just attach the poem to the sky like the Goodyear blimp or a sky-writer's banner? Wouldn't having the sky in a poem make it all very airy? Well, forgive the digression but I have two children - and is that a non sequitur or just a not-so-clever disguise? When we suddenly depart from the conversation and begin talking about the language of that conversation . . . do you ever wonder what car mechanics mean when they talk about EPG solenoids? (Did I even get that term right?) Good luck.

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