VULTURES IN HILLSBOROUGH, NC
When they come, they bring the fearful dark,
like English majors looking for work,
feather-caped, bare-faced in red or black.
Now there is no empty tree. Stained bark’s
one sign they leave. They show no respect
when they come. They bring the fearful dark.
They praise flesh with a twist of their necks,
with their hiss from song-refusing beaks,
feather-caped, bare-faced in red or black.
Where they’ve been is easy to detect—
bones realigned by their secret sect.
When they come, they bring the fearful dark.
They keep it hid, or so I suspect,
deep in images that our minds connect—
feather-caped, bare-faced in red and black—
to murder, suicide, auto-wrecks.
They slip away like impatient clerks.
They come back bringing our winged fears—dark,
feather-caped, bare-faced in red and black.
—from Poets Respond
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Paul Jones: “I’ve seen this coming. We’re not talking about a few little black birds. The vultures kettle over the cops cars, over the town buildings, in and out of any dumpster within blocks. That said they deserve a villanelle for their efforts and for their effect on anyone who has to contend with them. Rather than tell the facts, the insistence of the birds, of the feelings they evoke, and their behavior became the business of the poem.” (web)
