National Seashore Poem by Terri Witek

You see him first, tip-to-tip two feet at least,
topping a post. Then he's off. Is there a nest?
He drops, unfolds again from powerful shoulders,
smaller, it's another one, there are nine altogether,
wings pinned to sky. 'They're drying,' you guess.
No noise. The year you dated the pig farmer,
wild sex in the vegetables, everything muddy,
you learned their name, Turkey Vulture, and this goofy Americana
shakes out again that Midwestern boy,
the month you came in muddy from the hen coop,
muddy from the beans, his grumpy parents to whom these signs
meant work, not love, getting it just halfway wrong.
These birds too are hard at it, not nesting but marking shore,
sky, a green bottle, and then, back smooth as a newborn's,
a dolphin, chest empty but for one curved rib.
We shouldn't linger, nosy elders, disturbing need for a body
so profound it pulls land birds to wet their wings.
We wouldn't think to call it love.
It's death at work on this clear day, and we say it.