Too early in November to make us give thanks,
a wild turkey squeezed through the gap in the fence,
waddled out in front of the swingset slide
my sister and I thought we reigned over.
Thank god I had the sense not to wheeee straight into his path.
The turkey was larger than I’d imagined his species,
his feathers, shabby as they were, swelling his size
past what I’d seen Dad slice every Thanksgiving.
We had years to go till we hit our growth spurts, sure,
but even from below the swingset, from below the slide,
our homely trespasser loomed over us. It felt that way,
at least, so we ran to the oak tree and behind its trunk,
so fat and knobby and well-climbed that we pressed our backs
against the bark, clasped our hands together, and declared safety.
How presumptuous.
Too slow to make us shriek and spook the neighbors
but ugly enough to make me hate his bulbous neck, his snood,
his bald head and the way its skin turned bright red
at the base, as if to go HA. GOTCHA!
he crept around the tree without hooking his talons on the roots,
the motherfucker. So much for claiming a backyard
for all eight years of your life. A one-time intruder can conquer
it in three minutes flat, we learned that day.
We had to surrender.
3, 2, 1. RUN and we fled inside,
dodging the victorious creature I’d so grossly underestimated.
Before dinner I peered out the window,
found him perched on the front stoop, our front stoop,
surely plotting his annexation of the indoors too.
That night I dreamed he and his red-headed,
full-feathered forest clan stormed our living room
to hold all of us captive.
And even after Dad fixed the fence
I never wheeed down the slide the same,
never opened the front door
without checking the windows first.
You never know with turkeys.