Death Was a Poem about Vultures in the Sun
Bryan Way

I miss the blackened bones piled on the sidewalk,
          stacked in peculiar patterns, 
          forming shapes that bent in the eve,
                                      as dead bodies are rotting poetry. 
          They had a way of pinging themselves 
          from velcroed black walls, 
          sticky as labrador retrievers 
                                      hopping from honey puddle 
                                      to honey puddle, 
          as bees would chase the beasts & succumb 
          to their skin like flies on shit. 
I miss when we'd bury ourselves, likewise, 
          like the grubs of the earth; 
          like worms in the dirt. 
                                       Once, many years ago, 
          I found the body of a deer decomposing 
          on the side of the road, 
          and pondered existence. 
                                       I pondered purpose in breathing, 
          the existential 'why is why.'
          the organic matter sculpted of piss and liver, 
          melting on track with 
                   the rest of the plunge - where can I find you tonight? 
I pondered the animal's energy with the old woods, 
          the ancient mantled oak flowering sweet life
          in freed spaces, and then now, 
          years later, the bones are still there. 
                                        Left to dry. Mummied in 
          the brisk of the delegated sun; 
          an orphan, naked, under a streetlight 
          at the corner of roads seldom traveled. 
                                        Shards of clay stripped from the remains, 
          tiny piece by tiny piece, 
          and still I wonder - where do you sleep tonight? 
                      where do you rest your head? how many deer 
                                        lay dead by roadsides? how many do I not care about? 

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