Chicken Soup

The contractors at the Agency on Monday morning scuttled like cockroaches when the kitchen light is switched on. Many had wheeled carts piled high with cardboard boxes filled with binders and tens of thousands of top-quality words promising to meet all the requirements of the Agency.

I was one of them, of course, or I would not have been there. My lovely associated secured the signature of the young woman who is the gatekeeper for the Big Contract. There was a pulse of adrenaline to the morning; uncertainty mingled with the mundane.

I mean, how hard is it to drive across the river and get through a military check-point, find a place to park, drag the big box on the cart from the distant point on the base to the building, past placid Lake Manzelman that nestles the formal entrance with the fountain shooting a silver spay into the air amid the bulrushes, have it x-rayed, store the personal communications devices in the little locked cubbies, then wheel the thing up the long ramp, past the sober olive-drab hulk of the SCUD missile that decorates the soaring atrium of the new wing of the building.

With the signatures secured, we were free. Our box went into Jennifer’s office with the others, a growing bulk of brown cardboard. We could prove that our Notification was made via Blackberry, and then, light as air, we were back in the car, all responsibility dissolved.

I did not feel it that day- still jagged from the weeks and weeks of frantic activity that went with generating the proposal. Add to the mix the delicious stabbing realization that if we do not win a seat at the table, my job will be on the block.

And life is pretty good at the moment, with dark clouds looming. I would hate to lose the job, just as the storm hits. The stress did not dissolve immediately. There are so many things that had been deferred for so long. I could barely amass the list of them Monday afternoon. By Tuesday, the realization that two other minor proposals were due this week began to penetrate.

Willow that afternoon helped, but there was a fog that lingered Tuesday. A hangover, of a sort, that had nothing to do with Happy Hour White. I had a craving for chicken soup.

It was there with me when I rose. I thought about it all morning- the odor of it, the slow-cooked bird, the veggies chopped, the pungent integration of desire and action with the flashing blade of my trusty J.A. Henkels knife.

I will not trouble you with the recipe. What is on the stove is Stone Soup, pure and simple, constructed of what is on hand: Chicken, slow-cooked. Broccoli. Cherry tomatoes. Onions. Mushrooms. Garlic. Translucent yam noodles. Sea salt, fresh ground black pepper. Heart of Artichoke. Celery.

I left it on the slow burner when I collapsed last night. Here is what I saw in the morning, when the gentle heat had worked its magic:

One of lingering action items requires my presence in distant Manassas this morning, and hence, I am out of here. This senryu is just in from a colleague in Japan this morning. The three-line poems are structurally similar to haiku, and is unrhymed and the subject is based human nature. It is usually satirical or ironic, which seems to fit the mood.

I will have the thoroughly un-ironic soup when I get home.

SALARY-MAN SENRYU:

NEN-KIN WA
IRANAI HITO GA
SEIDO KI-ME

My Pension system
Is decided by those
Who don’t need one

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com