Dispatch #26

Keepsake

This poem originally appeared in Tablet. Thank you to the kind editors over there.

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Keepsake

The friend who betrayed
me, I hold no malice
toward him, remembering when
we drove the backroads
of Western Massachusetts,
and wild turkeys, barely lit by what red
remained of a sunset, crossed the road
and we stopped to let them pass.
We stopped talking, after hours
of talk, and watched those ghosts,
those turkey-shaped shadows,
slowly cross a narrow road
into woods where it was already night.