Counterpoise

by Lynne Byler


It’s all September sunshine and wing-flash flight.
Through the porch screen I watch
the chickadees, indifferent to my presence,
the nose-down nuthatch on the dogwood trunk,
the busy northern flicker at the suet,
and the polite behavior of blue birds
beautiful and courtly at the birdbath.

I walk into the kitchen and
look out the window over the sink.
Where the forest begins, in the far-right corner of the yard,
a turkey vulture feasts on a five-day-dead porcupine.
In the dark shadow the bird is
flat-black-feathered and bright-red-beaked.

With mighty tugs, it hauls out the innards.
The ribcage peeks through.
The quills dance with maggot-movement.
A second turkey vulture sits all day in attendance.
Occasionally three more big black birds circle overhead.

One tableau to another – once it made me dizzy.
But I’ve learned to live in the whole house –
from screen porch to living room to kitchen –
from bright song to cortege.
I watch the death-cloud shroud the phoebe;
I listen to the chickadee drown the death-thrum of the carrion bird.


* * * * *

Lynne Byler spent her career working in learning and development for Fidelity Investments. Newly retired, she now volunteers at the Sheriff’s Office in Springfield, MA, tutoring students, many on parole, as they work toward their high school equivalency diploma. Once in a while she is struck by the occasion when a poem she writes seems to have a wisdom she lacks.