Birds Nobody Loves
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