My Answer to the Red Wheelbarrow

You sit there glistening with rain water,
beside the white chickens
and I can't help wondering--why?

Every year you are mentioned
usually as a study in understatement.
Well, I can be as understated as the next guy
but no one would use me as an example.

I just want to know--what is in a name?
I can't even remember the guy who wrote it
but I would like to meet him.
Then I could ask him "How did you get away with it?
People would laugh in my face
if I turned in something like that."

But you are somebody.
You are known.
You are free.

(Written for MISCELLANY, the Georgia Southern Magazine of the Arts; Vol. 36; 1993; Wade Krueger, editor)