BAY AREA STEW -
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Botanical Gardens, San Francisco - Photo by Barbara Applegate
Chicken
by Diane Frank
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I was riding the N-Judah streetcar when an old Chinese woman got on with a chicken at Montgomery Street. As the door closed, the chicken jumped out of her bag and started squawking and running around the streetcar. She caught the chicken, stuffed it back into her bag. Everybody was watching, with a can-you-believe-this smile. Her feathers were pointed to the sky, as the chicken was trying to fly and find her freedom. I came home feeling shaken by what I had seen, as I'm sure this story will not have a happy ending.
I wanted to let that beautiful bird fly, and at the same time, I knew I could not take away the old woman’s food. Her face was creased like a river with muddy banks. Fish leaping out of the water. She got off at the same stop I did, and the chicken was sticking its head up out of the bag, looking for sky, a chick, or maybe a tree. Birds on the street were calling to her chicken. The Guardian Angel of Chickens was whispering, “Lay an egg. Maybe the old woman will change her mind.” The old woman was so pleased with herself. She had eyes from Guangdong, dreams of hot and sour soup, a sack of bok choy, and memories of hard times in China with no chicken. She was planning to feed her grandchildren a feast. A dream interfered. Sharks, swordfish, pirates, dark water. Now, everything reminds me of the chicken—what I think, what I eat, what I dream—so maybe that's why I'm telling you this story.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diane Frank is author of seven books of poems, two novels, and a memoir of her 400-mile trek in the Himalayas. Blackberries in the Dream House, her first novel, won the Chelson Award for Fiction and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines received honors in the SF Book Festival. Letters from a Sacred Mountain Place: A Journey through the Nepal Himalayas, invites you into the mountains with stories, poems and 53 color photographs. Diane teaches in the OLLI Program at SFSU. She edited the bestselling anthology, River of Earth and Sky: Poems for the 21st Century. She also plays cello in the Golden Gate Symphony. For more information: www.DianeFrank.net
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Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University.
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Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University (OLLI at SF State) provides communal and material support to the Vistas & Byways volunteer staff.
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