Strutting

All we could do is stare in awe at this fabulous, feathered display. This afternoon, Tom turkey strutted his stuff along the side of the park road, leaving behind prehistoric claw prints in the snow. In all his inflated glory, he was the highlight of today's hike. (And what an eerie garbled gobble!) Check out the flashy black and white patterns of his feathers, the perfect fan of his tail, and the surprise of his pale blue eyeshadow against his crimson head and neck. For several minutes, his strange and bold beauty shook us out of ourselves into the vivid day.

Here are the final four lines from R. S. Thomas' poem, "The Calling":

.... Learn the thinness
of the window that is
between you and life, and how
the mind cuts itself if it goes through.

This is another piece from The Poetry of Our World: An International Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, edited by Jeffery Paine with Kwame Anthony Appiah, Sven Birkerts, Joseph Brodsky, Carolyn Forche and Helen Vendler, from Harper Collins Publishers, 2000. R. S. Thomas is from Wales. Click on image to enlarge.

I just remembered -- in October, I wrote a "postcard" about wild turkeys for wigleaf . Click on the magazine title to read it. You can also read my flash fiction piece, "One-Handed Prayer," by clicking on the link at the bottom of that page.