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My leather clogs are soaked with dew and yesterday's rainfall through to my socks, and my backside is damp from the roughhewn rain-sodden bench, which is unsteady on the soft ground of the meadow. Low sun shines on my back and on the path’s thick wet grass that needs mowing. In October, the mower forgets his way through goldenrod that have lost their stars. White and yellow moths have flown away. Bees have no flowers to woo and have disappeared. The fire of sumac is flickering out, flame by flame. Yellow leaves on the tallest poplars around the pond applaud the parade of clouds marching past. Oh look! They have never done that step and roll before. Clap-clap-clap-clap-clap. Some in the meadow are falling asleep, unimpressed, while the chickadees keep fee-beeing and squeaking their high pitchpoints, and tree swallows treet their trits then swallow them in gurgles.
What have I come here for? Where is my place? A tippy bench at the center of things. So like a human. It takes long to quiet, shoulders hunched, hands warming under my thighs. Ah, just relax, kid. You think too much.
I don’t hear him coming, no treets, sqawks or screeches, but a shadow betrays him, like my brother’s thumb-hooked hand silhouette on the projector screen. I’ve seen them for days, since the neighbor bow-shot a deer and gutted him, leaving the entrails for wild animals in the field. I have seen them from the kitchen window, perched in the highest poplar branches like hunters in blinds, patient. But this morning, they are six-foot kites crisscrossing a gentle sky, scouting. Silent as arrows. He, my personal turkey vulture, could be scoping me, in my black crow hooded jacket, still as death. But I do not imagine this is so. Instead, I am certain that he is showing me how to scout, scope and scavenge. Why else does he arc over the pines and back under the sun, like a slow motion boomerang? Why tip and turn just there where the cloud parade ends, showing off the flourish of his wing-tip baton? What possible reason could he have for spreading his wing feathers like a sumac branch directly above me, floating down so close I swear I can feel him tap a message of longing on the wind’s drum? If he does not mean to demonstrate the silent way of seeking sustenance, why are we here?
You can listen to a podcast reading of this piece here.
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