Ornithology
Here, where no one seems to walk,
they couldn’t give the name of a bird
whose loosely gathered congregation
sweeps the mild midwinter sky
between Miami and Boca.
And so I noted down the details
to help me find it later: the lightly
coloured head it’s hard to see
beyond its dark expansive
wings, the blunt edge of its tail.
The one time I saw them grounded
I sensed how even they were anchored
to necessity, their trailing wings
the robes of Rembrandt scholars
around some broken thing;
and stripping out its sinews
in a clueless, botched dissection,
they had their fill and rose again
into the swirl of the air
like charred scraps above a bonfire.
(Coragyps atratus)
David Cooke won a Gregory Award in 1977. His poems, translations and reviews have appeared widely and has published three collections, the most recent of which is Work Horses (Ward Wood. 2012).