Grant Clauser
Elegy for a Turkey Vulture
We find the buzzard broken,
caught in wreckage
a flood surrendered
to the rotten groin of a tree.
When I touch his neck
a score of lice scurries
under oily quills.
In his eyes, the innards
of possums, the brains of fish.
His rending beak chipped
into a Lutheran frown.
We’ve seen them kettling
hungry above the hemlocks
on Devil’s Half Acre hill,
scouting for lost things
like an undertaker
at a church picnic.
When everything’s over,
is it also forgiven?
Buzzards treat all meat
equally, all sins
sour at the same rate.
When it pulls its head
from a bloodied belly
do griefs cling the sloped
shoulders, the wishbone prayer
of its chest, the shadow
we fear overhead?
Overhead more buzzards
swagger the lazy thermals
spotting what the river
left behind. We leave
the body to its brethren
and the only ritual they know.
Grant Clauser lives in Pennsylvania and works as an editor, writer and teacher. He is the author of the books Reckless Constellations, The Magician's Handbook, Necessary Myths and The Trouble with Rivers. Poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Cortland Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry and others. He is on Twitter at @uniambic.