The Condors

Updrafts loft great dark wings higher,
Beady eyes arduously reaching for Earth’s end.
She may fly for days until some piece of meat,
Male or carrion or both,
Catches her harsh stare,
Whereupon she’ll swoop down in great,
Leaping spirals.
Beautiful and articulate,
She speaks for a desperate, dying race,
In a quailing voice.

Huge black birds,
Intelligent like pigs,
Ply the skies
For a cure to the scavenger’s
Endemic solitude.

Another cry answers,
A pair,
A rare sort of thing.
These are the birds least likely to breed.

Power lines bend toward ground for them,
Car hoods, too, quake under the weight of
The condors.

Long necks
Nuzzle
As they couple on a Buick.