If I hadn't picked up the turkey feather

If I hadn't picked up the turkey feather

it might still be lying on the ground,
slightly mangled now by rain, by wind,
by the peculiarity of dirt's domain.

I might still be staring at a passing car,
caught in the thick craw of going or
not going, harpooned to the moment,

forgetting to look down, to caress
the careless treasures found in the garden
by the roadside, the gravelly seeds

of the fallen, the abandoned, the dispossessed.
I might be humming a lullaby, my arms
empty as the turkey footprints depressed

in mud. I might have forgotten the way
home, the rich drape of sympathy roosting
in my bed, the beauty of loss.