Poems by Others - "Under the Vulture Tree" by David Bottoms

Georgia poet David Bottoms wrote "Under the Vulture Tree" during a time of calm in his life while living in East Cobb County. The house and pond there and the life and around them, informed his work during that time.

I remembered the poem yesterday when I went into my own back yard to look at the little creeklets that had filled up because of the rain. Behind me I heard one long "swoooof" of a wing beat. A buzzard flew over low. That's when I saw it - the dead pine and several buzzards roosting and spreading their wings. Large and silent, the grey day rendered them in silhouette.


Under the Vulture-Tree

We have all seen them circling pastures,
have looked up from the mouth of a barn, a pine clearing,   
the fences of our own backyards, and have stood   
amazed by the one slow wing beat, the endless dihedral drift.
But I had never seen so many so close, hundreds,   
every limb of the dead oak feathered black,
and I cut the engine, let the river grab the jon boat   
and pull it toward the tree.
The black leaves shined, the pink fruit blossomed   
red, ugly as a human heart.
Then, as I passed under their dream, I saw for the first time   
its soft countenance, the raw fleshy jowls
wrinkled and generous, like the faces of the very old   
who have grown to empathize with everything.
And I drifted away from them, slow, on the pull of the river,   
reluctant, looking back at their roost,   
calling them what I'd never called them, what they are,
those dwarfed transfiguring angels,
who flock to the side of the poisoned fox, the mud turtle
crushed on the shoulder of the road,
who pray over the leaf-graves of the anonymous lost,
with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings.