Vultures
From a distance, they seemed hawks,
gliding in slow turns
wings spread in summer’s white-blue sky—
dark blots against heat waves.
We climbed suede hills
on fire roads
before veering onto foot paths.
It was the first time
I had ever seen you in a hat—
nearly two decades without covering.
Today’s heat had beaten the worship from you,
and the sun had already kissed you too much,
baked your speckled shoulders.
Our trail crested and rolled left and down.
Then we found their home—
skeletal electrical tower
buzzing like flies.
Eight, nine ten, their raw meat heads
with black eyes studied us—peered inside.
Some hunched; others spread and ruffled feathers,
all watching.
Above a few wheeled
while another glided down—suddenly, painfully, slowly
aloft.
It would be easy to say we had met death, but that’s
too simple
because I suddenly found my hand in yours,
a warm soft fleshy remainder of future days, of now,
of this heart beat.
Vulture? Hawk? Did it matter? Why this fear?
Consider the hawk: ripping life from a body before its time,
Crushing and consuming with cruel talons.
And the vulture?
I looked at you beneath the hat’s shade,
flushed from heat, slightly red cheeks, eyes sharp,
chest bringing in another breath and who knows how
many more.
You steadily
look back through the years.
I’ll take the vulture.