Garden Path with Chickens, 1916, by A.R. Williams

Garden Path with Chickens, by Gustav Klimt (Austria) 1916

Garden Path with Chickens, 1916

I walk a straight line down
this narrow, well-trimmed path
to ward off the wild  

but the muted lure of wildflowers
and overgrown grass pulls at me.

I long to be as wise as serpents,
yet pure as doves, but perhaps
I am more like a chicken, bewildered

on the brink of untamed abundance.

A.R. Williams

A.R. Williams, a poet hailing from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley (USA), is the author of A Funeral in the Wild (Kelsay Books, 2024) and Time in Shenandoah (Bottlecap Press, 2024). Connect with him on Twitter (X) and Instagram @arw_poetry