A Wild Tom Turkey

When he’s in the yard he’s hard to find
not like when he stands in the stubble
across the road brewing his voice

with deeper and deeper percolations
of what sounds like, “I’ll fuck anything
in feathers,” stopping now and then

to display his fan and perform a wobbly
polka, chest heavy as he breasts forward
but never closing on the hens who stay

in wary steps ahead conversing only
with themselves, their spindly heads foraging,
measuring the distance that frustrates

his occasional flustering leaps so that
when they reach the street, their scurry
encourages him to fly, as if he’s both

bull and matador, charging and turning
in the air but landing in a bounding
forward heap and the whole rafter

of them disappears into the grass,
where after much silence, after the sun
rises and sets and rises, after commandments

come down from mountains, after armistices
and treaties are written what happens
unseen in the grass still sounds like murder.