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Field Guide: Two
On John J. Audubon’s Wild Turkey
1
Like a brown frigate with a white figurehead
she hies through the woods, no match
for her mate’s plumage, as fine
as a Revolutionary War captain’s.
We read they were fleeing their homelands
before the advancing wild fires.
Kids in the Tennessee foothills,
we shaded our eyes like scouts,
thinking we’d earned the magic
to pluck her out of her camouflage.
In the last burning of dog days,
the sky a white haze of embers
blew hot in our nostrils;
our eyes burned red as the sun
hanging low on its bough.
Deep in the Great Smoky Mountains,
rangers found the last turkeys,
blackened as witches and crackling,
huddled into a coven.
We heard if you happened to kick one
it burst into feathery cinders.
We whispered of fire and damnation,
our homes the true edge of America
where Art had preserved what weather
and history sacrificed for us.
2
And remember, Father, how once
on a Sunday ride through those mountains,
we shouted at sooty convicts
who leaned on coal shovels to watch you
leap flames in your circus Pierce-Arrow,
and billow away to extinction,
the roadbed beneath you burning
in tombs of dusty branches.
—Frances Ruhlen McConnell |
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