Vulture

The solitary scavenger arced across again, quietly, defiantly– the lone witness in the
barren blue expanse. It’s vigilant gaze seemed to turn, to capture, to seize the entire landscape:
The wind dead, and the fleshy green of the trees atrophying. It’s gaze seemed to turn the brilliant
bay beneath the dock to a tame, concrete graveyard. It just circles– impervious and alone. It’s flowing, crimson anguish– it’s perniciousness seeps through the sooty masking feathers, from
some hidden scars. I lock eyes with it. Those venomous green eyes which seem so familiar– we
hunt each other– but I slip from it’s gaze, and it from mine– like some perphipheral mirror. I
watch as this tragic vulture, floats aimlessly, searching for something– something that it knows
can never be his, for he is a stranger– he is a scavenger, fated to solitude– ostracisized from this foreign world of beauty. Yet, as the sharp cuts through the sky bring this creature back a third round, it throws it’s beak to the sky and raises it’s wings defiantly, completely free– with a confidence confided only to a creature content with it’s unwanted fate. It seemed to soar through
the bloody sun like some black, indestructible god, and scorning the very nature which rejects it’s being. CAWWWW– screeching like a terrible harbinger, shaking the dock, and sending
some deep resonating cord up my spine At that moment, I love you, ugly vulture– soulmate,
brother, father, lover– know, you aren’t a lone. I watch as he sails through the blue, back through
the city of trees across the bay, into the unescapable darkness– forever. I look down to the
steely blue bay, and see the bird still beating, carrying on, proud, impervious, defiant– forever.