Cracks like a bullet hitting air but tumbles
like a football kicked too hard in the head
ripples like a river of glass
crashes like a sunset
into angry ocean.

Fifteen birds sing their songs before roosters
ever crow, yet he owns morning. Prematurely.
Announcing dawn. How you can almost glimpse his tail
in his morning call. His arrow head and jiggly crown
and dripping blood beard. What once cut wind
now beats chests like mad children, wings folded, tucked
voice framed in feather soft quiet of early dying night.
He tries, fails, routes his troop of torn up vocal chords
and evens the score again
until his final crashing crescendo
settles like a boot in gravel.

The sound is stickier than a tree.
Hornier than wild goats.
Ten hens are up already
four eggs in the nest
at four in the morning
so he isn’t anyone’s wake up call.

Roosters don’t sleep eight hour nights.
He knows every shade of filtered light.
Watching the horizon hours already.
Blinking steady, multiple takes, like in a movie
set where the sun is about to be peeled
open like an orange.