Pastoral by Cyn Kitchen Fitch

balmy December Saturday 
when snow should be flying,
I’m joined on the porch
by my rooster, Foghorn.
we face the low southern sun
me in my rocker, he nearby
perched on the table where,
in summer, I set my tea. before us
loom the coming blizzards
crippling blasts of arctic anger
that force me nearer the furnace,
he huddled with hens beneath
a glowing lamp. brittle
silence, then, or boot crunch
over hard snow during morning
water runs to the coop. 
today, we together
marvel at our good fortune, 
me, in my rocker, 
he, crowing hallelujah! for us both.




Cyn Kitchen Fitch teaches creative writing at Knox College in Illinois. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared such places as Louisville Review, Ars Medica, and Midwestern Gothic. Her short story collection, Ten Tongues, was published in 2010 by MotesBooks. She writes from her home on the Illinois prairie smack in the middle of the region once referred to as Forgottonia. 



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