Birds Nobody Loves Read online

  Birds Nobody Loves

  A Book of Vultures & Grackles

  by James Brush

  Copyright 2012 James Brush

  Coyote Mercury Press

  Austin, TX

  Kindle edition

  Table of Contents

  While Sitting in Church

  Confession

  Patton’s Army

  Quiscalus Mexicanus

  On March 1st

  Good Authority

  Grackle Ghazal

  Circling Vultures

  The Grackle Tree

  Chasing Westward

  Winter Solstice

  Summer Solstice

  Greyhound Joey vs. the Grackle

  An Avicentric Model

  Creed for Cathartes Aura

  In the Time of the Automobile

  A Cackle of Grackles

  A Committee of Vultures

  My Tourist Yard

  God Hates Grackles

  Trembling

  Say Grackle

  Lines Discovered in an Aging Ornithologist’s Field Journal

  Optimist

  Notes

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  for Silas & Rachel

  While Sitting in Church

  I didn't hear a word the priest said,

  but I saw the vultures circling

  rising

  in the air above the lake

  outside the windows

  beyond the altar.

  Things looked clearer out there

  and it made perfect sense to see

  God skipping church that day

  just to ride thermals with the angels.

  Confession

  (I caught my breath

  when you confessed

  that you love vultures too.)

  Patton’s Army

  A scene in Patton. Fallen infantrymen.

  Buzzards pick over bodies.

  A soldier with a machine gun

  shoots the birds. I cheer;

  my mom scolds me.

  Those birds aren’t doing anything wrong.

  Now I understand

  vultures, too, are beautiful:

  they clean our messes

  faster than military undertakers

  or even the highway department.

  Quiscalus Mexicanus

  1.

  Anglicized his name to honor his great tail

  and flew north over the border walls.

  Some like to say his tail is boat-like, confusing

  him with his shore-hugging cousins, but his

  eyes glitter brighter and he stays inland,

  staking claims to town squares on the plains

  where his strange and wild music clashes

  with the traditions of more established birds.

  2.

  The car radio blares louder than the wind,

  louder than the grackles chattering in the city trees.

  Grackles are socialists. They weren’t born in the U.S. Grackles do what Hitler did. Shouldn’t even call ‘em passerines; they’re not even birds. Sub-birds at best. They’re antichrists or at least lesser demons. They’re plotting the reconquista! Listen! They’re out there, the ugly filthy things!

  We turn it off.

  3.

  High on a power line, he cranes his neck upward

  stretching his beak to drink this northern sky.

  On other power lines, other grackles do the same,

  each hungry to gulp down this bright blue day.

  On March 1st

  the grackles opened

  like gates in the trees

  shadow birds, eyes glistening

  you could almost imagine

  these noisy shades

  abandoning tangible birds,

  parking lots and steel dumpsters

  in their odyssey through

  suburban woods,

  clacking and creaking

  like machines or clocks

  ticking away the last

  hoarse seconds of winter.

  Good Authority

  I always thought they’d like death metal,

  but I’ve got it on good authority

  vultures prefer smooth jazz.

  Ambulance rides can be rough;

  vultures know this and relax.

  Watching the highway, they know

  everyone gets his turn.

  Turkey vultures can smell a corpse

  from hundreds of feet up. Outflying

  Cessnas they arrive first on the scene.

  Black vultures follow, pushing

  solitary turkeys to the rotting edges.

  The black vultures brag that by traveling

  together they’ve learned to attack and kill

  small animals: calves and possums.

  Straightening their ties, they discuss

  elaborate plans to go public. Someday,

  they claim, they will become hawks or eagles.

  The turkey vulture listens to this talk,

  wondering if he too will evolve.

  Grackle Ghazal

  I stroll the streets and dodge mangy grackles,

  fluttering birds in trees, those angry grackles.

  Black feet and dark beaks snap at my sandwich—

  I’m surrounded by the grabby grackles!

  I sit a bench and study pawns and queens

  ‘til “checkmate’s” called by the cagey grackles.

  At dinner parties, I near drop my drink

  shocked by the sins of the feisty grackles.

  I hang for hours on back porches, strumming

  old guitars, swapping lies with folksy grackles.

  At night, I roost in city trees and sing

  wild croaking songs, toasting jolly grackles.

  Circling Vultures

  1.

  We drove out of Colorado Bend,

  passed a dead tree full of vultures.

  It was hard to imagine anything

  more perfect for a Texas morning.

  That day, we believed in forever,

  even as we passed the vulture tree.

  2.

  Along the highways, vultures soar overhead,

  shadows sharing asphalt with cars that run down

  those shadows unnoticed by the drivers.

  The vultures don’t miss anything.

  They know we’ll be back this way.

  They will wait, and in the meantime,

  their wings will barely move.

  3.

  One time I saw a vulture with a secondary feather

  bent backwards and up like the flap on an

  airplane’s wing as it comes in for a landing.

  The bird didn’t seem to mind his twisted feather,

  and when I saw him again,

  he was 15 miles down the road,

  and I was on my way home.

  4.

  I asked a birder if he’d seen anything interesting.

  He spat on the ground, saliva sizzling on summer

  pavement. Nothing. Just a bunch of buzzards.

  The vultures ignored us and our binoculars, content

  to trace their simple prophecy in the sky.

  The Grackle Tree

  After a few days under the grackle tree, the blue sedan began to develop a white pox, which spread with each passing night. The automedics shook their heads in grim certainty, fully aware of the limits of their training and skill. Eventually, it was decided that the problem was environmental, and men with shotguns came and took determined aim into the trees before firing blanks into the upper boughs. Sometimes the grackles would scatter at the sound, flying off to local birdbaths where they would clean up before returning to their usual roost. The men, sa
tisfied, moved down the street where they would take shots at the starling tree, pigeon tree, and a supposed second grackle tree that legend had it was located somewhere south of 16th Street. Despite the diligence of the men, the grackles always returned, and the slow infection of the blue sedan continued. After a month, no one remembered what color the car had been, and no one ever discussed its owners or what became of them.

  grackle tree

  boughs shake and chatter

  at the cars

  Chasing Westward

  The vultures are heading west, their slow flying

  shadow grace just an illusion of the blank sky.

  Clock them. They’re racing away fast as thought.

  Faster than often-repeated certainties and fears.

  They escape with gizzards full, hurtling toward the sun,

  shuttling some soul’s nourishing remains westward.

  Out there, I hope, they’ll catch the day that never ends,

  the place, I believe, night will never fall.

  After sunset, I hear the rumbling highway, cars

  chasing westward, chasing dreams, the fading light.

  Winter Solstice

  Grackles poke around the right-of-way,

  a confusion of iridescent-robed seekers,

  an endless search for grass seeds.

  The junkie at the intersection watches,

  never takes his eyes off the grackles

  even when I hand him some crackers

  and dried bits of bread. I look in his eyes,

  nobody’s home, and we both understand

  the grackles’ bright yellow eyes are more alive,

  more aware of the gray curtain coming down

  fast from the north. He stretches his arms

  ready to ride that icy tailwind south, but the

  light changes to green—too many cars now

  block his path, but it’s useless anyway.

  All his flight feathers fell out six years ago.

  He stands in exhaust fumes, praying that

  grackles share seed when snow’s coming.

  Summer Solstice

  Three o’clock in the afternoon,

  central Texas summer day,

  over a hundred degrees out.

  I know there will be no birds,

  nothing but grackles and vultures.

  I go out, and I’m not surprised.

  Only common grackles like this heat.

  The other birds hold still like

  knots in the trees, silent waiting for dusk,

  trying to keep their colors from melting

  into the brown grass and faded leaves.

  Overhead turkey vultures soar

  on steady outstretched wings,

  folding sky and letting it move

  around and over them as they ride

  thermals up to more temperate

  atmospheric zones. Meanwhile,

  the grackles and I enjoy the heat

  until the other birds begin to stir

  and it’s time for me to go home.

  Greyhound Joey vs. the Grackle

  Three bites taken on the run, two soggy feathers

  float from his mouth, no sign left of any bird.

  I call animal emergency:

  Yuck, but your dog will be fine.

  It’s what he’s made to do.

  I call another vet just to be sure.

  First, Ewww. But I am told the same.

  It’s what he’s made to do.

  My friends weigh in:

  What’s one less grackle?

  I hate those filthy birds.

  Thank goodness. Grackles are awful.

  Now, each morning I fill the feeders

  as I’ve always done, and Joey follows

  as he always has, but something's new:

  in the way he watches me pour the seed,

  he admires how the trapper baits his traps.

  An Avicentric Model

  I watch a

  vulture

  soar in perfect

  stillness

  across

  open sky.

  ::

  Or is it me

  moving,

  stuck to

  earth,

  rotating beneath

  fixed birds?

  ::

  Do I know the

  math

  to make this

  true?

  If I did,

  would you believe?

  Creed for Cathartes Aura

  We shit on our own feet,

  try anything to be cool.

  We seek death out;

  so we can live and grow.

  We circle tragedy, hope

  to steal something from it.

  We wobble when soaring;

  balance requires adjustment.

  We draw circles between clouds,

  and patrol the land beneath.

  We live in a world of cycles;

  We give carrion new life.

  In the Time of the Automobile

  Deer run thick along our road;

  they don’t even think about the cars.

  Vultures fly thick above our road;

  they know all about the cars and wait.

  At night, they hiss from the trees, grunting

  tales about all the cars that stopped in time.

  The deer don’t usually remember.

  They forget to fear the cars, so unlike

  discriminating mountain lions and wolves,

  forgotten now despite genetic warnings.

  The vultures watch the cars approach,

  watch the deer stand still or sometimes

  whisper, Run, just a moment too late.

  Though I hate to see the ruined bodies,

  I don’t begrudge the vultures’ venison;

  their meals must be pretty tasty to them

  and besides (I admit it) I sometimes find

  I’m fascinated by the morning meetings

  around their roadside meals.

  A Cackle of Grackles

  mostly grackles—

  unoiled hinges creaking

  high in the trees.

  —

  strutting, beak open,

  a grackle displays his wings

  the female decides.

  —

  a tornado of grackles

  swirls through the lot

  leaving a sparrow

  —

  grackles spill across the sky:

  lap lanes leading to the sun.

  I adjust my backstroke

  and follow.

  —

  a pair of grackles

  nuk-nuking to the moon

  heat-silent street

  —

  reeds bend

  the weight of grackles

  chattering

  —

  a flock of grackles

  barges into the live oaks

  acorns thunk rooftops

  —

  the gates of spring

  creak open

  a jay tilts his head

  grackles return

  shadows descend

  A Committee of Vultures

  a pair of black vultures

  sits on the neighbor's rooftop

  wings open to the sun

  —

  shadows

  across a brown field

  vultures searching

  —

  far beyond the swallows

  vultures haunt thermals

  silent and endless

  —

  on a bed of leaves,

  a deer skeleton picked clean,

  save one furry hoof

  —

  in a cloudless sky

  a vulture circles the prairie

  seeking an ending

  —

  pale sky

  two vultures

  wheel upward

  slow steady

  wingbeats

  —


  a soaring vulture

  his graceful arc

  pierced

  by fighter planes

  the color of sky

  —

  a black vulture rides

  down the cold front wind

  new year’s eve

  My Tourist Yard

  They show up in April with the cowbirds

  and the red wings, all the icterids returning.

  By June they’re hoarding the feeders,

  the birdbaths and the lawn, clucking

  in the trees and teaching their young.

  By August they’ve returned to the parking lot

  at the grocery store, handing the keys to the yard

  back to the chickadees and titmice who,

  more deferential, somehow seem a little

  sweeter than their noisy cousins who only

  summer here, throw their cash around and

  leave without learning the culture or our ways.

  God Hates Grackles