Dear Wigleaves,

Here I am, up on my hill, looking out at the rain-splashed trees. The blp-blp-blp of the rain is soothing, like the dreamy tapping of fingertips against my glass of seltzer, as I sit here thinking. Out in the yard, everything is green-and-shiny, highlighted with a few clusters of crimson maple leaves. Against the green, the red pops. Here comes fall.

Funny, but when I stare outside, the "real" strip of woods is not all I see. The past creeps into the scenery. During another rainfall a few days ago, I looked out to see wild turkeys seeking shelter. In the shadows under the trees, they were reduced to silhouettes. They stood absolutely still, necks outstretched, like two black bowling pins. It made me laugh. I knew baby turkeys were with them, but I couldn't see them. Again, I imagined what I couldn't see. I knew what the babies looked like, because I'd observed them growing – and their numbers decreasing – as summer passed. Whenever I got too close, mother turkey halfheartedly charged.

Now swirling memory carries another older scene into focus. One fall, walking downhill, I watched turkeys magically lumber up into branches to roost, eerily settling into cutouts against the cobalt dusk. All these pictures are nested inside my mind, co-existing with what's happening outside right now. Like a strange matreshka of images.

I wish you were here, but you don't have to be to see what I see.

Your pen pal,
Chris 






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Christine Boyka Kluge is the author of Teaching Bones to Fly (poetry) and Stirring the Mirror (prose poetry and flash fiction), both from Bitter Oleander Press, and a chapbook, Domestic Weather, which won the 2003 Uccelli Press Chapbook Contest. She's also a visual artist. You can visit her blog here here.

Photo detail on main page courtesy of Christine Boyka Kluge.

Read CBK's story, "One-Handed Prayer."

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