The baby vulture, captured,
imagined me as I was:
mother, lover, rival.
Call it an existential crisis.
The nest I’d found
out prowling the woods
should never have fallen,
but it nearly
fell into my arms.
A real mother hovered
upwards, rocked
on the thin air above the river.
Call it a moral quandary
if you must, but just
think about it first:
the very first thing effective
at love she saw,
yes, was me.
Think positive psychology.
All this vulture
could learn about nurture
I taught her: how to laugh
like a drunk in the afternoons,
how to touch
softly the back of a neck.
And nature:
that jealousy is rage,
but rage like passion dies down.
Once, set free,
she rebuffed the hospitable air.
Call her scatterbrained,
purblind.
I named her Angeline,
and Angeline limped back
to my doorstep and pecked
at my backdoor glass.
When I shot her, her neck
writhed like a rattlesnake
alive in the grass.
