VOYEURS
—after the short documentary Vultures of Tibet by Russell O. Bush
We watch others
watch a Sky Burial
in the flapping winds of Tibet.
The vultures arrive
from the stony peaks
piecemeal at first
then as sky avalanchea tumble of
boiling birds tearing
into flesh.
The curious pay a fee
to local officials
make a short climbfor the best angle
snap shots of the vultures
the human body.
We watch each other watch
audience
filmmakers
tourists
camera lenses
monks
vultures
their hard copper beaks
brown feathers fluttering
like prayer flags.
EVERY MOMENT THE MIND MANEUVERS
Every moment the mind maneuvers
toward its next moment, so each moment
becomes an elegy, and the past:
a grimed fresco beyond repair. There was
a life before this one, and some days
I can almost return to it, but our old selves
have long since been cast in clay
behind Plexiglas, and even when I
harvest lilacs, or when the unmistakable
fragrance of jasmine wafts across
the yard, I am again remembering you,
but never as then. Looking back, it’s like
a separate life where two figures who
hardly resemble us, as if carved into a
limestone frieze, still glean the dark
flat seeds of wisteria to propagate
bines and harness in the scent of those
pendulous blooms: a deep and abiding
history. The events of this life
pile up like casualties. The present moment
greets us slick and evasive
as a betrayal. What’s left but to
burn this instant into the brain: the way
your skin’s flecked like a stone
fused out of smashed minerals
and your proprietary intake of breath.
The Greeks painted their statues
to give life to marble, to make the gods
in their own image. They are now,
all of them, leached and worn replicas,
cracked torsos veined with cinders
we’ll never again mistake for breathing.
