View from the turkey coop – a poem

Standing Outside Belwing Turkey Farm

I walked down to the bottom of the street
And across the road, ‘til I reached the fence
And stood there watching them, huddled
In the darkness of the night and the hutch

White bundles of breast, leg, gizzard, wing
Large footballs on stilts hunched to the cold
Unknowing and clueless to the fate awaiting
Them in the next forty eight hours

No more meaning given to this day than any other
No genetic memory, though properly earned
Over several hundred years of ritual feasting –
Each football the end of the genetic line

My son wants us to liberate them and I have
A picture of five hundred turkeys running across
Route 44, stopping on the yellow line, unsure
Just why they should cross the road

What would they do? Where would they go?
What other purpose do they have but the one
They were bred for, like another widget or bolt
Or jujubee made to be consumed by our gnawing hunger.

I am glad I have no purpose, or none discovered
No plan laid out for me by genetic splicing
No idea of where I should go, what I should do
Except that given to me by the gift of the day.

Don’t forget gang – enough is a feast.

Bill

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