I desperately need a new computer, I tried to email myself a cool picture I had of the turkeys I wrote about and couldn't. This photo, a Medusa version of me, is going to have to do!

I Hope I Never Stop Locking My Keys in the Car

Forget that it humbles me to have to ask for help
and I hate relying on strangers,
even ones I am paying with a yearly AAA membership,
but in that half hour I was waiting
I took a walk, winding my way down
the corkscrew road from the retreat I had been staying,
and stopped when I heard scratching.
In the oak tree underbrush, there were wild turkeys,
old men arranging their lives’ stories,
they froze when I ducked under the low heavy limbs.

I had been preparing for this moment
unknowingly, having raised a flock of chicks,
and sitting once in the coop to meditate,
letting the girls and even
the rooster come gently peck me.

There in that wild space,
I understood the poultry cry
a rippled warning that bounced like an echo,
and the way a few of them, the bodyguards
fluffed their feathers to look bigger.

I crouched on the ground and waited,
both surprised and not surprised
when one came toward me,
poked the air with a nod and the others followed.
I will never know how close we could have gotten,
for at that moment the locksmith roared around the bend,
but I could remember the feel of my own chickens
and how they often let me
(for a moment) touch their soft feathers.