Vox Populi
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Barbara Crooker: The Vultures
Down they come, ungainly as giant feather dusters
clumping to the ground. These shadows of darkness
make me shudder on a bright day, the one after
the presidential contest where we elected a con man
and a felon, gave racists and homophobes the bully pulpit.
Carrion is everywhere if you’ve got a nose for it.
The black umbrellas of their wings open and close. Because
I could not stop for death, Emily wrote, and here it is, the end
of our democracy and decency. Vultures are the garbage
collectors of the natural world; they know how to clean up,
polishing off that road-killed deer, this dead opossum. Will we
recognize the bones of our constitution after they’ve been
picked clean, or will we be too baffled to recognize their white
gleaming? Something startles the birds, and off they flap,
darkening the sky. A cold shadow passes over.
~~~~
Barbara Crooker’s books include Slow Wreckage (Grayson, 2024). Her many awards include the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council fellowships in literature.
Copyright 2025 Barbara Crooker
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Wonderful, as always, Barbara.
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Yes, wonderful as always.
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Wonderful imagery and comparisons which incapsulate the moment without the often tedious trappings of polemics.
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yes, well-said!
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My small joy is waking up in the morning to Vox Populi and, no matter how bleak the subject, knowing there really are people out there who get it and getting it, express it beautifully.
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Mine too, Barb.
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this captures the spirit that has been hovering around me. Thank you Barbara Crooker.
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Oh, thank YOU, Bonnie!
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I have to find a way to get joy back – at least for a while.
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We need to have some small measure of joy. . . .
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Yesterday, I ate unwanted things from my stupor bowl; last night dreamed that a mother cardinal defended her nest, her Constitution. Then I woke to the vision of turkey vultures tearing through a lesser being bumped off beside the canal. A Homeowner’s Association near where my sister-in-law lives is hoping to use a flamethrower to incinerate the airplants on the powerline. That group of men is plotting to spend five million to build a wall to keep out or divert the next storm surge.
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Thanks, Jim. A powerful series of images.
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Wow, those are some strong images–
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Thank you for your wonderful white-gleaming poem. Here are a few lines from two of your other poems that also speak to our arabesque of a situation:
We are kissing as though/our lives depend on it; we are holding/each other tightly; we will never let go. BC: Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Paris
This is where I’d like to be working, reducing/ the buzzing complicated world to its pure essence,/ ridding myself of arabesques and complexities,/condensing the dance of my life in simple forms. BC: Late Painters…Matisse.
There are times we need the simple forms, these times when we must never let go, even as the dark shadow passes over us.
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Thanks for those kind words.
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