
               The Chicken

     The yellow and brown chickens
     played around the red
     fallout shelter
     on the day that the second sun appeared.
     Unaware of the world around them,
     the frittered and frolicked the hours away
     doing those chicken things
     that chickens always seem to do.

     The second sun came closer and closer
     to the land where the chickens did their thing.
     It wasn't really a sun at all,
     but an advancing wave of radioactive energy
     released by the first attack of World War III.

     The farmer on the porch looked from the chickens to the second sun.
     His jaw dropped.
     His shoulders slumped.
     His pupils became pinpricks.

     A second before the shockwave hit,
     the rooster looked up at the farmer
     and laughed.

     Scientists believed that cockroaches would be the only survivors
     of a nuclear holocaust.
     But nature demands that chickens rule the world.

                                - WindRider 07/97
