If I hadn’t picked up the turkey feather

it might still be lying on the ground,

slightly mangled now by rain, by wind,

by the peculiarity of dirt’s domain.

 

I might still be staring at a passing car,

caught in the thick craw of going or

not going, harpooned to the moment,

 

forgetting to look down, to caress

the careless treasures found in the garden

by the roadside, the gravelly seeds

 

of the fallen, the abandoned, the dispossessed.

I might be humming a lullaby, my arms

empty as the turkey footprints depressed

 

in mud. I might have forgotten the way

home, the rich drape of sympathy roosting

in my bed, the beauty of loss.

 

Published in:

eclectica (Jan./Feb. 2015)