Circling

She lay withering on the pavement,
swollen with grief,
feathers twitching with the hot dusty breeze.
Left abandoned,
devastated,
broken, and in pain.
There was no explanation for her condition,
only a sordid pile of feathers to be seen.
Once beautiful and soaring
from moon to sea.
Now an end approaching
and blood-drenched
pieces
of me.
Her flock circled,
trying to nudge life.
She was quickly fading with the lies
sold to her
and hung like hooks inside the meat of her heart.
She was losing.
Lost
a battle,
a war,
a broken king in her wake,
a now deserted queen
never to be saved.
She quivered in the heat,
last breaths of a love
she will never again know.
Unique.
Breathtaking.
In an instant—
in a jaw dropping death-punch,
gone.
Her flock circled.
A last call for life,
final cry for uprising.
In the vein of her unanswered screams for mercy
she lay back down
to silence.
Letting go
and finding rest
in her overpowering sense of
death.
 
Photo: HENRY VARNUM POOR (1888–1970) Dead Crow, circa 1943