Happy Anniversary, Chicken's Body

Again, it's been too long and I have much to tell.
It's a problem similar to, as my friend says, "pelvic congestion," only of a nonsexual nature. Things that have not come up and out my "wordhole," as another friend says.

So instead of all the mottled goods inside my head, I will here, now, present to you the song I was reminded of today.

It was my birthday this day. Yesterday. I became 32. One year before the Jesus age, of course. My ex-brother-in-law, who I have known since I was 12, has a random poet's mind. He once left me the following brilliant voicemail, in college (before there were cell phones, when I would manically pick up extension phones all over my tucked-in-the-Romantic (capital "R")-woods-of-New-England campus and check my voicemail many, many times a day—in the library, between class, post-post-modernist critical theory literature deconstruction class, etc. (literally "and so on" beyond what I have the attention span to name right now).

The song:

"It came from a chicken's bo-dy.
It went inside my bo-dy.
The particular chicken is mis-sing.
I can't find my bo-dy."

Needless to say, this remained on my voicemail for an entire year and was played multiple times for the benefit of friends, who wondered at the sanity of my then-brother-in-law, just as I cackled at the rhythmic fantasy of this impromptu song, loving that I was somehow related to a man of such a strangely convoluted mind.

All these years later, I realize I had sublimated the chicken song.

But then.

Along comes a voicemail today (yesterday) from my ex-brother-in-law (on my portable cellular mobile telephone today, yesterday, March 21, 2007):

"Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear _____ _____ [nickname only my father ever called me—I began to cry here]
The particular chicken is mis-sing." [Grand, happy laughter here.]

I walked the rest of the block to work with a sunshine smile on my suddenly older face.

The past is not gone, I thought to myself—it has been called up to meld with the present, and for this, I am glad. Happy anniversary, chicken's body. You are one lucky chicken.