Laid awake until I heard the call of a rooster.
What all I was waiting for. So I could know
it was not too early to raise myself from bed.
Little game roosters down the road.
They are not my birds. But they are my morning alarm.
Every day. Something about six thirty.
My rooster doesn’t make a sound until seven.
Less to prove at dawn. A better coop for a home.
He probably laid awake the same.
Listening for strangers to call his name.
Wondering why they call it his own head.
When it does not obey. Orange eyes closed.
Hard yellow lip teeth tight. Flightless wings folded.
The warm, unintentional hums off hens heads tucked
hidden buried in feathers and fat bodies.
The finger drum tin roof rain now pushing on two days.
Big mammals unmoved. Dry, and unflinching in a comfort
that prays to stave off another too warm winter stolen spring
rain green lean staring daggers at a backdoor sort of Sunday.

We share that in common.
The roosters, the sun, and I.

Maybe all of us all who suffer the same burden
of a misplaced sense of responsibility.
Up way before we have to be.

Like if we ever fail to witness to it,
there may yet never come a dawn.