Nature’s Folly

Sneak away behind the trees
they'll never spot us
among the evergreens
and the gentle hush
of the meadow breeze
will surely mask our
gobbling. We'll freely
gander, grazing for hours,
spend our sunshine in folly,
our wobbling superpowers.
We don't soar over seas
or traverse mountain towers
but live our simple turkey dreams
haunting your backyard flowers.

I wrote this poem for the 104th Wea’ve Written Weekly prompt at the Skeptic’s Kaddish. This week’s prompt comes from Ben, who asks us to do the following:

From free verse to haiku…
This ‘folly’, be up to you!
Can’t wait to read how you do.
Your inspiration is ‘folly’.

I’m not sure why, but for some reason the image of a bird came to my mind when I heard this prompt. I don’t think birds are foolish by any means, but I think something about their freedom and flight seems so carefree, almost like folly. 😅 So there you have it!

We have a lot of birds in our backyard but apparently not many pictures of them. Sandhill cranes and turkeys are the ones I’ve managed to capture in photos– both because their appearance is infrequent enough to make me grab my phone and because they are simply slower. I also have photos of hawks and bald eagles, which are surprisingly plentiful near our house. I guess I also have this little robin to share, too. The turkeys are admittedly not the brightest creatures as they’ve wandered all the way up to our front door before (sadly, my phone was dead at the time) and simply look silly wobbling along in a line, so they’ve been assigned folly duty for the sake of this poem. My lukewarm apologies to turkeys everywhere and to Benjamin Franklin, who believed our national bird should have been the turkey. (Ben was probably right.)

18 thoughts on “Nature’s Folly

  1. I see so many robins in the park, but the only birds coming to my window are sparrows and mourning doves. There are lots of hawks around here too, but I’ve only seen cranes in the city once.
    Turkeys fit the folly theme well I think. It’s always a good time to write about birds. (K)

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