Roadside Homily Comments

Blessed are these vultures, robed in black,
blood on their beaks, on their clawed toes,
who attend most single-mindedly
to what we most want to forget—this death
at highway's edge, a belly-opened,
fly-ridden fawn around which they shuffle
deliberately, wings jutting disjointedly.

The vultures say everything is flesh, nothing more.
Blessed is the kingdom where all things end
to clear the way once more for beginnings.
For theirs is the kingdom of transfiguration,
of the forever stilled taken into their ungainly bodies
and lifted up, their outstretched wings translating
the afternoon's warm, rising thermals in elegant circles.
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