A bearded stranger puts a crystal ball into my hands.
There’s a chick inside, a few days to hatching.
Its skinny body is diaphanous white and moves—
muscles, tissues, organs—a faint, beating heart
inside a thin membrane of amniotic fluid.
I squeeze the ball lightly and my heart skips a beat.
Cluck-cluck. I close my eyes and see the image of
Lot’s wife, eyes petrified. The ground opens and traps
her body in a pillar of white and pink Himalayan salt
rising from her feet all the way to the top of her head
like a shroud. As it thickens, a few particles fall back
and form a foundation where her feet had been.
I do not understand what this image has to do with me
or the chick, which I believe is innocent in all this.
I find myself thinking about Paradise,
wishing that the chickens would be in it.