VULTURE

I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside

Above the ocean.  I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling high up

    in heaven,

And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit narrowing, I

    understood then

That I was under inspection.  I lay death-still and heard the flight-feathers

Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer.  I could see the

    naked red head between the great wings

Beak downward staring.  I said “My dear bird we are wasting time here.

These old bones will still work; they are not for you.”  But how beautiful

    he’d looked, gliding down

On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the sea-light

    over the precipice.  I tell you solemnly

That I was sorry to have disappointed him.  To be eaten by that beak and

    become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes –

What a sublime end of one’s body, what an enskyment; what a life after

    death.

                    -- Robinson Jeffers