Poetry, after a while without
UNDER THE VULTURE TREE
We went to the small zoo at Bear Mountain Park a couple weeks ago. There are a limited number of very beleaguered-looking animals. It's a terrible zoo, really. It reminds you of what zoos actually are: animal prisons for human voyuers. The best zoos, of course, make everyone involved forget this fact, but Bear Mountain is not one of them.
And, because metaphor abounds, the place has been beset in the last several years by hundreds, perhaps thousands of turkey vultures. They just chill with the bored bears and pissed-off, prowling coyotes. They are big, stinking birds.
I was rather put off by the whole affair. But Vaughn really loved the vultures. It was so odd. Not the cute, cynical foxes. Or, the sharp-eyed barred owl. But the great, lazy vultures, perched everywhere they were not supposed to be.
I thought it was the oddest thing. Then, my friend SL sent me this poem. And I thought, "Ah, there is sense in the world."
Under the Vulture Tree
We have all seen them circling pastures,
have looked up from the mouth of a barn, a pine clearing,
the fences of our own back yards, and have stood
amazed by the one slow wing beat, the endless diherdral drift.
But I had never seen so many so close,
hundreds, every limb of the dead oak feathered black,
and I cut the engine, let the river grab the boat
and pull it toward the tree.
The black leaves shined, the pale fruit blossomed
red, ugly as a human heart.
Then, as I passed under their dream, I saw for the first time
its soft countenance, the raw fleshy jowls
wrinkled and generous, like the faces
of the very old who have learned to empathize
with everything.
As I drifted away from them, slow on the pull of the river,
reluctant, looking back at their roost,
calling them what I’d never called them, what they are
those dwarfed transfiguring angels,
who flock to the side of the poisoned fox, the mud turtle
crushed on the shoulder of the road,
who pray over the leaf-graves of the anonymous lost,
with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings.
--David Bottoms
We went to the small zoo at Bear Mountain Park a couple weeks ago. There are a limited number of very beleaguered-looking animals. It's a terrible zoo, really. It reminds you of what zoos actually are: animal prisons for human voyuers. The best zoos, of course, make everyone involved forget this fact, but Bear Mountain is not one of them.
And, because metaphor abounds, the place has been beset in the last several years by hundreds, perhaps thousands of turkey vultures. They just chill with the bored bears and pissed-off, prowling coyotes. They are big, stinking birds.
I was rather put off by the whole affair. But Vaughn really loved the vultures. It was so odd. Not the cute, cynical foxes. Or, the sharp-eyed barred owl. But the great, lazy vultures, perched everywhere they were not supposed to be.
I thought it was the oddest thing. Then, my friend SL sent me this poem. And I thought, "Ah, there is sense in the world."
Under the Vulture Tree
We have all seen them circling pastures,
have looked up from the mouth of a barn, a pine clearing,
the fences of our own back yards, and have stood
amazed by the one slow wing beat, the endless diherdral drift.
But I had never seen so many so close,
hundreds, every limb of the dead oak feathered black,
and I cut the engine, let the river grab the boat
and pull it toward the tree.
The black leaves shined, the pale fruit blossomed
red, ugly as a human heart.
Then, as I passed under their dream, I saw for the first time
its soft countenance, the raw fleshy jowls
wrinkled and generous, like the faces
of the very old who have learned to empathize
with everything.
As I drifted away from them, slow on the pull of the river,
reluctant, looking back at their roost,
calling them what I’d never called them, what they are
those dwarfed transfiguring angels,
who flock to the side of the poisoned fox, the mud turtle
crushed on the shoulder of the road,
who pray over the leaf-graves of the anonymous lost,
with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings.
--David Bottoms