Birds Of Prey And Field Mice Poem by Amberlee Carter

something has died this morning.

Out in the field the farmers reaped yesterday, a nest of raw things, and the crows circle the area, their black bodies honing in.
I imagine their eyes fixate,
one on the bloody carcass, and
the other on the opposition (that's what I would do) .
They are starving, but they wait to strike,
perhaps seeking a target precisely at the heart,
perhaps calculating a strategy to scavenge
what meat, and marrow remains tethered by sinew to the bones.

They carry themselves like African vultures,
primitive,
instinct,
velocity,
they gather wind in their feathers
as though it were the birth place of all flown things:
flying as an artistic expression, an extension of self,
for it is not simply enough, to live, nor enough,
to live simply.

They take what is not theirs to take,
though it never truly belongs to any, one, existence,
even the skeleton is borrowed from the earth,
and the energy no longer flowing through the hollowed out corpse,
and especially the energy
exasperated by the famished birds, never
entirely belongs to the vessel;
this life, is not, your own life.