A sleepy morning in a Connecticut suburb…the strong smell of coffee permeates…rising up along the wooden staircase, through the door, under the blankets. Far, far in the distance…almost as in a dream, a low drifting apparition…lies the steady quiet rumbling stream of heavy traffic heading into the city, the Big Apple beckoning those still working on this Juneteenth. The sound of moving wind, steady, forward frolling, quiet. Not tight enough to hear the grinding gears…not wide enough to sound like the ocean…just the forever grey twisting traffic ribbon heading down into the canyons.
A rooster crows.
I sit up in the bed. Silence. There it is again. Did I actually just hear a rooster? A rooster in paradise, far from the maddening crowd. It is incongruous. Perhaps a rooster in hand is worth two in the city which never sleeps.
Later, after coffee I enquire. ‘It isn’t actually allowed’ a family member answers and shrugs indifferent shoulders.
I love this. A rooster in Connecticut. Somewhere, in a lonely meadow lying fallow between New York and Connecticut lines, a scrappy rooster, maybe a Rhode Island Red or a Sussex was snatched and brought to the suburbs to soften the manic stream of sprawl and urban clutter. So now he’s here, crawking and muttering and letting go with abandon that high pitched wail…and we all hear and marvel…
690 Saint Paul 