Yesterday a turkey hen stepped out from the woods while I was planting, and when I turned to better see, I noticed she had ten or twelve chicks. They were small, about the size of a nose, say, brownish-tan, and they dashed about on invisible legs beneath their mother’s belly and likewise between her legs, around and around, in and out, in sync already with gravity, with locomotion, with speed, and most especially, with vulnerability, the long arm of vulnerability, the hen, head high, clucking just so as she navigated through my tangled stash of firewood, the chicks attached to her clucks as with strings…but with such small legs? on day one to be mustered through the tangle on such legs?
