Lazy Sundays are nice. After a Saturday spent hemorrhaging time and sanity in a bleak choreography of errands, I woke up at 5 a.m., bizarrely eager for a day without obligations. Nothing urgent to do. Just coffee, a run, and the possibility of a clean kitchen by noon.
I had two cups of coffee, slowly. Greedily spooned more almond butter than I’ll admit from the jar, let YouTube autoplay me through last night’s limp SNL sketches, and pulled on enough layers to justify jogging into the gray Bostonian abyss.
The original plan was to run through my local conservation trails. But the Charles River has been more magnetic lately. So I headed east, up the hill out of my neighborhood, crested Cushing Square—still a living tribute to the god of construction delays—and glided down toward Cambridge. Past Oakley Golf Club, where the fences are ornamental but the wealth is not, I spotted him:
A turkey. A magnificent tom, standing inside a bus shelter. Alone. Completely still, facing the street like he was waiting—patiently, unbothered—for the 73.
There was no one else around. A few cars hummed past, but it was otherwise silent. I see turkeys all the time—usually hens, usually clustered in chaotic suburban flocks. But this one was different. Larger. Proud. Like a misplaced royal in an MBTA vestibule.
He didn’t react when I stopped. Didn’t blink. Just stayed there, regal and disinterested, behaving exactly as I imagine most people would if a jogger suddenly paused to gawk at them through the glass: polite, and quietly over it.
