Wild Turkeys - a haibun

They moved next door during the season when wild turkeys flew in and filled the town with shrieks. All vehicles stopped; the turkeys hopped. The males swaggered and dashed; females ran into traffic to get smashed. And on our dead-end street, bent like a crescent moon, Eeya sat at the threshold knitting.

Knitting memories,
ignoring most what hurts most
purl knit knit purl knit

From some third world country she came, married to a big, burly brute. Twice her size but not so wise, twice her age too. Eeya said, "I took him with love maybe from birth, for karma binds heaven to earth. My pain is wine for the Divine. I am my mate's game, though he gets his kicks with fists and sticks."

"It's karma," she said,
while lifting her wounded head,
"and I've killed my pain."

She shut out the light, wove in the darkness with warps and wefts; not a victory true. Inside a dungeon without insight, an addiction loomed within her mind. She took to task to wear a mask, but she was so young and lonely too. Was it her fate's plot to tie her up in a weaver's knot?

Calligrapher's ink
wrote in black, a dreamless sleep
while death was lurking.

One night, I heard Eeya cry; I imagined why; so I called the police. The year was nineteen seventy-six. They said, "Please, Ma'am! Mind your own biz. We can't do much; for nowadays, it is such with domestics."

Love tied Eeya's tongue,
luring bitter ecstasy,
dark stars crowned her hair.

Wild turkeys lacked grace to steal the scene. The moon had to be full to dominate the doom. Eeya fed wild turkeys cracked corn, but left before they flew away, leaving things in me unsaid and bouquets of lilies in gloom.



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A haibun is a Japanese form of poetry, a narrative which is composed of prose plus haiku.