KittyAnne on the back porch.
One by one, the turkeys came out of the stand of trees on the edge of the farm. Three in all, slow black silhouettes from what I could see.
They walked in a line then briefly formed a circle, but never stopped moving. Back in single file, they deliberately made their way through the pasture. I imagined them as Victorian men in black tailed coats with hands clasped behind their back.
I thought about getting up so I could see them as disappeared behind the stone wall, but didn’t want to chase them away. Although I did wonder, as I sat on the back porch, if one of them was a Tom and I was missing him strut his tail feathers.
But I stayed where I was already sunk into my meditation, my body, if not my mind, a dreamy cloud resisting movement.
The sheep paid no attention to the turkeys, but Lulu gazed at the alert, ears tall and facing forward. After no more than a minute she lowered her head, gave Fanny a nudge with her nose, and both walked away, uninterested.
The red winged black birds and grackles have arrived, the morning bird song thick again.
Starlings fill the top of the maple, their chaotic chorus abruptly stopping and starting for reasons clear to them but a mystery to me.
At some point in my meditation, the hens hopped onto the back porch, pecking at the cushion on the bench where I sat, peering into my empty cup of cacao. They stayed until the cat came. Sometimes he chases them and sometimes they chase him.
Another mystery to me, how they decide who will run.
The turkeys, the sun, the hens and the cat, came and went, but the birds never stopped singing.
