Found in Willow Springs 95
31
This deadpan silver morning,
I stop to gape at the winged helix
above my garden—fifty, sixty vultures
tracing slow circles. My chin tips back,
mouth full of cold.
But the birds are not a metaphor for death.
No, even though this birthday makes me
the age my mother was when I was born,
and even though I have decided,
haven’t I, to say no.
And when the article I read this morning
said that the endangered bear
refusing to mate is genetically dead,
that was just a small cruelty.
No, the vultures do not turn their gears for me
but for some invisible glory of rabbit or fawn,
or for the joy of the turn.
Some days, I imagine a shadow child
who trails gently behind me.
We pause to lock identical eyes
or to pick a scarlet leaf from the street.
Her name sits in my cheek.
This is not so different from the birds.
Some wheel so low their feathers brush
the spruce points, and some are pinprick high.
Often, they weigh down the walnut branches
like strange dark fruit.
I know they make a life here.
