Ken Stone: Turkey

Turkey

My mother’s father, held in place by work and braces,

relaxed at evening and spoke of things more luminous

than stars above his wide veranda.

We’re coastal and turkey-less here, not like

your horizon spreading pebbles for a turkey’s craw.

Tell me why the cock bird, when not scarring paddocks

with flick-knife wings, hunts for worms,

when it already wears one fixed to its brow?

I had no answer, for I was eight years old,

and callow in the ways of turkeys,

especially one with green-sheen feathers

and the head of a blushing flower.

My grandfather toyed with language

and we played that game near his festive belly,

which savoured turkey—

We must harvest our turkey soon.

Even as a thought we must pluck,

gut and roast him, before he flavours

a neighbour’s room.

To think of a turkey was easy,

but to slaughter one?

The immensity of such a task!

It would be simpler to grapple the moon.

It would sap my bravery to drain its colour.

And what of the deed done: blood on my hands,

and a turkey head a grotesque flower?

Grandfather sensed my trepidation:

We’ll leave that one alone.

It can scratch a circle and shelter there.

We’ll satisfy hunger with a lesser bird,

and carve to its keel of bone.

Sixty years onward, an imagined bird shapes

with fanning wings and worm-draped brow:

a turkey on a western plain, tightens time’s craw

to be ground with the grit of words.

Ken Stone