Turkey Season Dream

Volume Two: Moon of the Mockingbird's Song

I fell asleep to the chorus of desperate longing. 

Aprilis - the month of the goddess Venus. 

Tree crickets, toads and mockingbirds called to the sky, looking for someone to make them whole. A thousand songs of hopeful lust. 

I came aware in my dream as I usually did, flying low and quiet over the woods. 

I stopped at the first being I noticed, American Hazelnut, a leggy shrub with hard inedible nuts.

They sing songs about European Hazelnuts. You could gain uncanny knowledge by eating them, or find a doorway to the spirit world through a hole in a trunk. 

I didn’t know any songs about our hazelnuts. They held their secrets tightly. 

I felt a gap in my knowledge, like a hole, so I placed the back of my hand against the plant and let the catkins flutter against my skin. 

Then I noticed someone with me in the dream. A jumping bush cricket. 

He was very nervous. A plump, defenseless, soft-bodied insect. He held his wings tightly to his back. His antennae flicked in either direction looking for trouble. 

In spite of his fear he approached me and said the woods bloom with beaks.

If I promised to keep the cricket alive through the turkey season, he’d tell me where the turkeys were roosting. 

A bad deal I thought. I’d have to follow him around all spring and he’d probably get eaten anyway. How would I know it was him? He didn’t even say whether I got a bird. 

“I’ll find the roost myself,” I said aloud, waking, and thanked the cricket for the reminder to go scouting for roost trees.