The Chicken and The Hawk

We sat outside on the patio furniture, sun-drunk in the calm before the Thanksgiving storm. 

My Labrador was sprawled out on the edge of the circled chairs, and the lone chicken was close to the middle. Lone chicken, since most of her brethren were picked off by hawks more than a year ago. I haven’t replenished the brood, because Scarlett (named after Scarlett Lewis, from the second For The Sender book) has been a happy chicken. 

You know, good on her own.

Like me.

Of course, anybody who came over would say, ‘You better get that chicken another chicken’ or ‘Chickens need chickens’ or some other riff on the no-solo-chickens-allowed chorus. They said the same thing about Annie, one of my horses, when she was single, so to speak. 

But Annie was happy, too. I learned awhile back that herds and broods don’t have to be all the same animals, just like family doesn’t have to be blood.

Which is why Scarlett was hanging out with us, sun drunk in the calm before the Thanksgiving storm.

Until she screamed.

I heard the hawk before I saw it, wings brushing my mom’s chair as it swooped down, talons drawn on Scarlett. She was clucking around maybe 18 inches from my mom, and a couple feet from my dog, but this predator didn’t care. It had a kill in sight.

And almost in its clutches.

The hawk hit the chicken, but couldn’t hold her. Two wing beats later it was gone, hiding in the branches of a nearby eucalyptus. I corralled Scarlett, who’d darted under the table and seemed to be in some sort of chicken shock, and took her back to the coop.

Later that night, when my turn came to say what I was thankful for, I didn’t say anything about the love of my family or my dog or my health… all of which I am grateful for. 

I said I was thankful that the hawk didn’t kill the chicken.

I wonder if everyone at the table heard what I was really saying, though.

How in an instant, life can turn to death, and how grateful I am that in this pile of ‘instants’ we call life, we’re still here.

Sun-drunk in the calm, before the Thanksgiving storm.

What’s She Going Home To

Almost 15 years ago, I watched a woman walk into a small listening room in San Diego, in a slow unfolding of steps and pauses that I’ll never forget.

She was there to see my friend Chuck Cannon play a show, but not how most of us see a show.

I knew, because of her careful approach with a white cane, because of her large dark glasses, because of the way the bouncer shoo’d people away from her seat in in the front row. I was standing in the back of the room, next to the mixing board, and the sound engineer told me she came to shows every once in awhile, and was completely blind.

She sang every word to every song.

I walked outside after the show, just as she was feeling her way on to a public bus. She sat down behind the driver, under the fluorescent lights and advertisements, and in a puff of exhaust, was gone.

I wondered what she was going home to.

I told Chuck that story on the drive home, and he said Bro, that sounds like a song. He’s written some massive country hits, so I was inclined to agree. Later that night, we wrote ‘What’s She Going Home To’ sitting across from each other in my living room, and while both of us thought the song was special, it never saw the light of day.

Until now, well over a decade later. That song and story worked its way into the new book, and is the first track on a collection called Black Eye Blue, which goes hand in hand with the narrative in Open Up.

‘For The Sender’-style.

Listen to the song for free, wherever you get your music… here are a couple of options:

Spotify
Apple Music

P.S. I’ve got a story about this for later, but a video you might dig just premiered an hour ago:

Gratitude is a healer… let’s all find some this week.