something has died this morning. <br /> <br />Out in the field the farmers reaped yesterday, a nest of raw things, and the crows circle the area, their black bodies honing in. <br />I imagine their eyes fixate, <br />one on the bloody carcass, and <br />the other on the opposition (that's what I would do) . <br />They are starving, but they wait to strike, <br />perhaps seeking a target precisely at the heart, <br />perhaps calculating a strategy to scavenge <br />what meat, and marrow remains tethered by sinew to the bones. <br /> <br />They carry themselves like African vultures, <br />primitive, <br />instinct, <br />velocity, <br />they gather wind in their feathers <br />as though it were the birth place of all flown things: <br />flying as an artistic expression, an extension of self, <br />for it is not simply enough, to live, nor enough, <br />to live simply. <br /> <br />They take what is not theirs to take, <br />though it never truly belongs to any, one, existence, <br />even the skeleton is borrowed from the earth, <br />and the energy no longer flowing through the hollowed out corpse, <br />and especially the energy <br />exasperated by the famished birds, never <br />entirely belongs to the vessel; <br />this life, is not, your own life.<br /><br />Amberlee Carter<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/birds-of-prey-and-field-mice/
