Silence

The sun is four hours high. The air is starting
            to stir from the south, heavy and dry with sun. 

The birds are soaring high above and to the south,
            waiting for carrion. They circle without the 
            least movement in their wings, as imperturbable
            as a slow thought in the mind, waiting for 
            something on the desert floor to close 
            its eyes and lose its vital heat. 

So far above, how do they know when something dies? 

I marvel at how irrevocably they wait. 
            They are a patient species. 
            I think they must not have the 
            sense of time. 

They are harmless, really, since they do not 
            kill. Only what has already died, they 
            pick clean, brothers to the south wind 
            which I feel blowing through the creek beds, 
            through the ribs of fallen saguaro, through 
            the dry grass, picking things clean.