Flight at the Edge of Decay

Air bent to lens—

desert trembling,

heat pulling shapes apart

as dust lifts in unraveling strands.

A tightening begins:

earth drawing upward,

sky dragged down,

a rising twist of grit and wind

breathing out,

older than Aeolus.

Then the vultures come—

dark, patient,

keeling toward the turning throat,

lean bodies reading the spiral’s pull.

One slips in.

Caught—

lifted—

given to the air—

released into a long, clean arc.

Another follows.

Then another.

A circling wheel of hunger,

precise as hunger,

each bird folding back

into the rising current,

answering a rhythm

etched in bone.

In the hard glare,

beauty edged with ruin—

the desert’s quiet

truth

written in their flight.