Ode To A Buzzard (Or Why I'D Love To Be A Buzzard) Poem by Sidi Mahtrow

Watch a buzzard soar
Moving without effort.
Just a flick of the wing and a turn to the left or right
Takes nothing to remain in flight.
Maybe a shifting of the wind
Causes a slight movement and then
The black one who is above it all
Changes course and is again righted
To continue the balancing act
Which permits them to look where they like.

Maybe it's in search for food
Or perhaps only to go from point to point
Only God knows.

Some point out the taste that overwhelms
But on consideration, humans don't have better it seems
No over ripe cheese or fermented cabbage
Would be on the buzzards choice of tableage
Road kill perhaps is on the menu
Either fresh or aged in their view
For a feast is all they desire
Regardless of the imprint of a Goodyear tire

Then there's the lack of shelter from the cold
But Buzzards migrate from North to South it's told
Arriving with human like precision in the fall
And departing with the first warm day known to all.

What I envy most you should know
Is they require no glasses on their nose.
Sight is attuned to seeing what's below
Whether it's a hundred feet or more.

Then with a twitch of the feathers
They descend to see what to us would only be a blur.
Joining their brethren for a feast
At long last, nothing's left.

Sharing sometimes with a possum
Or other species that enjoy what repulses some,
Then with a hop-hop they again are airborne
To resume their flight in early morn.

So we end this ode to:
The Buzzard that's due
Recognition as Nature's own efficient device
For removing garbage, clean and nice.
Then soaring above it all
Through Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall.