for my neighbor, Chris
The vultures feel like friends who peer at me
to see if I am still alive or dead.
They care, they’re hungry, high and wheeling free
across the valley, searching to be fed.
I’m being noticed and attended to.
I call hello, since what else can I do
to see if I am still alive or dead.
The forest flushes in the winter wind
brushing the windows near my chilly bed
where fitful sleep and nightmares have me pinned.
My dictionary gives me sounds of birds.
Or is this wonderland? Or are they words?
They care, they’re hungry, high and wheeling free
through gray and purple clouds around the sun
that dives behind a mountain and a tree.
The night, the vultures, cannot be outrun.
They soar, they swoop, they search, they hunker down,
they are not welcome in this lonely town
across the valley, searching to be fed,
although this is the town where misfits fit.
Some look at vultures with a sense of dread
because they feast on carcasses and sit
in flocks in leafless trees like evil judges,
hunched over, dark, and shitting tons of grudges.
I’m being noticed and attended to,
and so I notice and attend to them.
I’m on a mountain with a perfect view,
the flocks of vultures like a diadem
catching the light and gliding on a wing
to give my hand a bird engagement ring.
I call hello, since what else can I do.
They teach me how to soar in icy weather.
I learn to see things from their point of view.
I hope to fly. My shoulder grows a feather.
I love their silhouettes against the sky,
the way they ride the wind, their hunting eye.
—
Mary Meriam studied poetry at Columbia University (MFA) and Bennington College (BA). She works as an editor and publisher of lesbian poetry and art, and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Arkansas. Her most recent poetry collection is Pools of June (Exot Books, 2022). Her poems have appeared in Literary Imagination, Literary Matters, Poetry, Post Road, Prelude, Rattle, Subtropics, and The Poetry Review.
