We have all seen them circling pastures, <br />have looked up from the mouth of a barn, a pine clearing, <br />the fences of our own backyards, and have stood <br />amazed by the one slow wing beat, the endless dihedral drift. <br />But I had never seen so many so close, hundreds, <br />every limb of the dead oak feathered black, <br />and I cut the engine, let the river grab the jon boat <br />and pull it toward the tree. <br />The black leaves shined, the pink fruit blossomed <br />red, ugly as a human heart. <br />Then, as I passed under their dream, I saw for the first time <br />its soft countenance, the raw fleshy jowls <br />wrinkled and generous, like the faces of the very old <br />who have grown to empathize with everything. <br />And I drifted away from them, slow, on the pull of the river, <br />reluctant, looking back at their roost, <br />calling them what I'd never called them, what they are, <br />those dwarfed transfiguring angels, <br />who flock to the side of the poisoned fox, the mud turtle <br />crushed on the shoulder of the road, <br />who pray over the leaf-graves of the anonymous lost, <br />with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings.<br /><br />David Bottoms<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/under-the-vulture-tree/
