Vultures at Cold Canyon

And now that steady
shhhhh, a knife-edged whistle
announcing what vision can’t
conceive: they are descending
in a shape that is exactly your own
fear, the actual feathers’ flip and mess
and the body’s plummet through
what-is-no-longer-air, but also
body, and the sheer resist of weight—
that sound, and the talons,
and the red throat, the hooked beak
that rips a slit in the sky
and enters it.