[Jim Ramsey]

Hi Ella,

Thanks for the suggestions. I've changed wordings to incorporate them. In the interest of full disclosure this poem is an assemblage of incidents. I had a neighbor once when I lived on a lake who trapped squirrels and nutria, considering them pests. One of his small squirrel traps was carried off and a raccoon was seen and pitied days later dragging it around.

I do have hollies that I prune around my yard and the ones near my bird feeders seem to be a favorite nesting ground for birds as well as a hunting ground for a pair of feral cats that were probably dumped out near here a couple years ago. I found broken eggs there last spring and a couple years before I pruned a large size holly limb and unknowingly spilled a nest's eggs myself.

I've seen several live opossums in my yard before and found a couple dead there over the years. I've yet to see a mother carrying her joeys though. From what I've read the fate of joeys can be anticipated by their length when lost off the mother's back. Under nine inches and they are unlikely to live without rescue help. They actually piggyback up to a year of age. When they are really small they stay inside the mother's pouch. They are the only marsupial outside of Australia, and apparently the term joey for their young has become widespread.

I don't actually live on the edge of town but near several large heavily wooded areas. I find deer tracks in my yard fairly often and hear owls hooting every night. Your turkey eggs were an image that brought some little mini-tragedies back to mind. I put that together with some of David's intimations of morbidity, a lot of health concerns popping up for me, and voila, a poem. Another experiment in prose poetry, I am iamb-ing heavily through this all the way and am wondering how that works. Thanks again for commenting.