So this is how the ear first twitches
towards war: the vulture, pulling apart

the indiscernible animal on the neighbor’s 
lawn. The crowd that stills 

to watch its crime, the victim 
unraveled into gizzard rope. 

I have seen a lot of death lately. 
First the bumblebee, decapitated

in the garden, the work of some angel, a hornet,
then the squirrel with its toothpick ribs,

its chest torn open to the sky. My mother
swerved to avoid the offal stench 

following my sound; I couldn’t help it. 
I lowed the first note, the cue 

to mourn obvious and red. 
And how to say I saw the bird 

descending, oblivious to all 
but its appetite? How to say I understood

its hunger the way all birds do:
talons out, hooked in the light.