As the sun turns everything golden,
turkeys fly into the firs to roost,
full grown birds with their burden of feathers,
babies, compact and stubby
with necks like dinosaurs,
amazingly fly up, too.

They negotiate themselves
from branch to branch in the stand of trees,
gradually working their way higher
as more clamber in from the adjacent field —
much small peeping,
much loud fluttering —
not bedtime yet,
just time to be safe and high
for the large-family rituals of settling in
before the darkening sky.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 3, 2016