Vultures...

unlovely. unloved, bareheaded 

hooded scavengers with a reputation,

scarabs of stinking refuse 

disposal bird of prey in a kettle, 

a committee, wake no more. 

your numbers have diminished 

picking bones from the old world. 

it is a new world of plastic rain...

pelt and fall on canyon and basin. 

breathe deep, inhale the pristine air

of particulate matter. it pushes evolution

but ideas are dangerous things.

call me the seeker... can do, can’t do,

call me when you have herd immunity.

exemplar: 

be a hummingbird, not a vulture…

in this divine milieu. 

on swelling waves and mingling currents,

birds see colors humans can only imagine.

attracted to sweet nectar, not the carcass,

ugliness, and beauty of life side by side.

you tell us to embrace our fears then name a few.  

vultures and hummingbirds should fear pesticides.

humanity is passing through a crisis of growth.

I do not want to overcome my fears. they save... wits 

about you, they. who are they? I am who am, I correct her.

I climb mountains with a fear of heights. it’s obligatory.

it is like the carcass that feeds the sweet nectar.

paradigm-shifting calling it by its true name 

with a sense of premonition and of expectations, 

look at the earth around you

...here I sit in paradise cay watching fluorescent flits

of a charm of hummingbirds fighting for territory. 

Let us look at the earth around us. What is the cause of this disorder in society,

this uneasy agitation, these swelling waves, these whirling and mingling currents

and these turbulent and formidable new impulses?

Humanity is visibly passing through a crisis of growth.

Humanity is becoming dimly aware of its shortcoming and its capacities.

It has a sense of premonition and of expectation.

--Teilhard, The Divine Milieu, 153