Sunday, December 06, 2009

A TRIBUTE TO OLD TOM WHO WAS SHOT FOR BEING "A NUISANCE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

by Leah Maines


I'm sad about our sweet old turkey. I miss him. He would come up to the door and to the side window and just look in. He was as old as dirt. He would run away instead of guard anything. But he liked to prance around and flirt with his two hens. He would beg for bird seed and steal from the bird feeder. He liked cheerios.


Leah Maines is former Poet-in-Residence of Northern Kentucky University. Maines is the best-selling author of Looking to the East with Western Eyes, #10 in the "Cincinnati/Tri-State Best Sellers List" (Cincinnati Enquirer). Her most recent collection Beyond the River (KWC Press, 2002, 1st edition) won the Kentucky Writers' Coalition Poetry Chapbook Competition.
___________________________________________