The Photo That Never Was

There was a message on my phone last night.  From my dad.
[Imagine Harvey Keitel's voice here]:
"....I put leftover chicken in the yard today.....for the birds....and a vulture landed in the yard and ate it....in the yard....a vulture...  then it flew up and sat on that skull you made years ago (a plaster skull I left at the house a long time ago [I didn't make it])....a vulture sitting on a skull...and I don't have a camera....  a VULTURE....on a SKULL....  and I DON'T have a camera....." [mumbles.  hangs up.]

Probably looked exactly like this.

In The Poisoned Entrails Throw.

Image by Kelloween.

Carrion

Image by One lucky guy.

Vultures

Like large dark
lazy
butterflies they sweep over
the glades looking
for death,
to eat it,
to make it vanish,
to make of it the miracle:
resurrection. No one
knows how many
they are who daily
minister so to the grassy
miles, no one
counts how many bodies
they discover
and descend to, demonstrating
each time the earth's
appetite, the unending
waterfalls of change.
No one,
moreover,
wants to ponder it,
how it will be
to feel the blood cool,
shapeliness dissolve.
Locked into
the blaze of our own bodies
we watch them
wheeling and drifting, we
honor them and we
loathe them,
however wise the doctrine,
however magnificent the cycles,
however ultimately sweet
the huddle of death to fuel
those powerful wings.

Mary Oliver

 Image by Yuri Bittar.
 

Screamin Halloween 2011

More of ScreaminScott's Haunt here.

Beasties

The art of Arnaud de Vallois.

His blog.

Leftover Appleseed

Buzzards

Turkey buzzards watching the Johnny Appleseed photo shoot yesterday.