The Buzzard

This rather graceful menace was circling above me yesterday as I roamed the farm. There were two actually. I was walking, I wonder if to them I looked as if I was about to drop dead in my tracks and they would have an answer to the question of dinner. Nonetheless, watching them glide and arch was something.

(Can't find any poetry about a buzzard, so this will have to do...)

Vulture by Robinson Jeffers

I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling
high up in heaven,
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit
narrowing,
I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-
feathers
Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer.
I could see the naked red head between the great wings
Bear downward staring. I said, "My dear bird, we are wasting time
here.
These old bones will still work; they are not for you." But how
beautiful
he looked, gliding down
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the
sea-light
over the precipice. I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten by that beak
and
become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes--
What a sublime end of one's body, what and enskyment; what a life
after death.