“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”—Mary Oliver, Sometimes
My lifelong goal as a writer: to articulate the ways that how we treat the earth and the body are deeply rooted, and how grief, love, and care for the natural world in the tending of the dying and dead teach us empathy and how to be animals.
My piece: “Entanglements”
His feathers were everywhere—strewn across a decaying Iowa road, in the ditch, then concentrated clusters in the crumbled median, where his large body lay. The road, which bisects a “green belt,” breathes the waves of traffic—empty, then suddenly full. When I got out of my car and walked over to him, I was struck by the colors—so many that I could not name them all: entanglements of brown, orange, green, blue, white, gray.
I had never seen a wild turkey this close. Sometimes I saw them as I drove to work in the mornings, moving in a leisurely group in a recently-harvested corn field. I had seen a turkey fly once: a brown ball of feathers and lovely neck leading, rising like a balloon, just high enough to clear the front of my car.
Now, the details of this incredible creature came into focus. Though most of his insides had escaped, his body was intact. I beheld his unmarred feet—bright yellow with dark ridges and sharp claws. I imagined all the fields and forest floors that they had touched.
All I had in my car was a small, red plaid blanket—the wool kind that my mother always told me I should have for winter, along with a coffee can, a candle, and a flashlight. I wrapped his body and tucked in the sides, like my mother used to do when she said goodnight.
When I lifted him, I was surprised by how light he was, how completely his large body filled the space between my arms. As the outbreath of vehicles began, I rested him on my thighs, and kneeled down, folded my body over his as gusts of heat rose around us.
I carried him to the tall grasses down off from the edge of the shoulder and lay him down. When I stood up I was suddenly aware of the powerful wind, which whipped my oversized T-shirt around me, exposing my belly, and my chest, where my heart beat wildly at the margins of a shrinking patch of green.
—Amy Nolan