by Lynnel Jones
i A hawk streaks down, locks on the smallest chick then rising with frantic hullabaloo of flailing wings screams braggadocio too soon. The lost fluff poult sinks down. ii Before I remembered the Grandmother part of Great Spirit, Wakan-Tonka, the One in whom all things exist and carried a pipe and knew I had the turkey medicine, I thought a turkey was a jerk or lunch. Late, I learned I have Sioux status as a pot-latch - give away - foremost in generosity. Late, boundaries became virtue. I know from when I raised poults years ago, the big white fluffy ones lift up their mouths to rain 'til they can't swallow any more and fall down drowned. But now I've met wild turkey - not the kind on ice - I look with grateful eyes on turkeyness. Like Ogallala squaws, hard-working hens lump their young to spell the job and stave off death. Yet even so attended buxom, grousing chicks make hens grow faint; then brave-like, they strike out alone. iii I used to be the hawk on my walk, fly up in wild hullabaloo and lose the prize. Now…in my leaving, you might hear me croon a Frost love song: "The only certain freedom's in departure."* *Robert Frost, "It's Hard To Keep From Being King When it's You And In The Situation."
Published in Points East Annual Poetry Review, 2006