This is Turning Into a Travelogue

This poem followed me home from our trip to Austin over Spring Break.

High Above the Blanco in Hill Country

Vulture is an ugly word,
bitter on the tongue,
hunched in the back of your mouth
when you dare to say it.
And it is a foul business, after all,
the cleaning of meat from bone,
funeral rites for the animal kingdom.

But the vulture in flight,
high above the Blanco
in Hill Country,
hovers as elegantly as any eagle,
its arcs mathematical, methodical,
its patience that of the saint,
not the gravedigger.

And to see a vulture
perched on your rooftop,
high above the Blanco
in Hill Country,
is not an omen
of impending doom,
but rather a symbol
of flight, of light,
of unexpected grace.