An hour after the farmer finished baling hay,
turkey vultures flocked over the field,
circling high a few minutes, then descending
in tighter arcs of air. Farm machinery
must have killed some rabbit, opossum,
or fox hiding or living within the tall grass
when a sudden mechanical racket
was the disguise fate wore that day.
Is there blame here? There is no malice,
no forethought of destruction.
It is harvest time, hay to feed other
mammals that will sustain still others.
It takes little time for vultures to flap wings
and life flies off into blue air.
Essays, reviews, and chiefly poems in such journals as: America, American Angler, Boston Review of Books, The Common, English Journal, Poetry, Poetry East, Poetry Salzburg Review. Most recent book of poems: River Voice II (Adastra Press, 2020). In April 2018 he was appointed the first Poet Laureate of the city of Easthampton, Mass.
