Friday, October 6, 2017

Maintenance Field in August

Twice, on my rounds,
I smelled the warm stink of death
and saw the vulture rise
simultaneously.

Lucky. To have someone
to pick your bones.
Hidden by the tall grass,
my body could decay
discreetly, in a diaspora
of ants, worms, wasps, and larvae.

But let a burnished beak archive,
a bright eye survey,
this bald coroner, a cleric,
cross my body to enact the liturgy:
Dust you are,
and to dust you will return.