~JEFF KNORR~

WINTER TURKEYS

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There have been thirty-six turkeys 
in my life, each near Christmas.
Two I have missed, in ’86 and ‘88
and also missed the death of my father’s mother.
That year in Vienna, I phoned
from a bar serving schnitzel.  Then outside
the pale evening, as if a far off fire
heaved itself into the violet dusk.

We eat well at these dinners: stuffings, 
mulled berries, roasted turkey, many wines.
Our mother is getting so she shakes a bit
lifting the black, fat-spitting roaster.
Our father carves still with respectful 
movements to the bird, feeling its curves
into neat slices of meat. This year he might 
talk about the old Murray cabin up the road.
But that’s as passing as the morning quail.
Instead he’s telling me of a cousin he hasn’t seen
since his mother’s funeral.  And this word
hangs, the f sticking on his lip
like the clot of fat and blood he wipes from the knife.

Later I’ll leave him alone, jacket and brandy,
his half a snifter on the back deck.
He’ll look a long way off into the sky and find
the railroad camps near Shasta,
our sister’s ballet debut,
his first night with our mother cruising San Jose.
They tail like glowing meteors over the ridge.
In the morning we’ll walk shoulder to shoulder
quietly through new snow
as though the stars had fallen to ashes over night.
 
 

© by Jeff Knorr