Poems by Karen Jones
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Turkey Vultures at Malheur Visitor Center
Cathartes aura
by Karen Jones
From Canary Spring 2025
Karen lives near coastal mountain foothills in the heart of Oregon’s Willamette Valley, the traditional homeland of the Mary’s River Band of the Kalapuya.
Silhouetted against the lightening sky,
they perch among rungs of a lookout tower,
group roost under a sliver of old moon.
Domes of their small heads tuck between
rounded shoulders. They hunch like monks
in ruffs of feathers, hiss and grunt the news,
vie for a bit of trash-talk.
There isn’t much they don’t digest
from yesterday’s carrion. Wings opening,
horaltic towards the sunrise, shaven faces
scrubbed to blood-red shine, they mull over
who’s sick, who’s dying, locations and flavors
of recent roadkill and canyon corpses,
their expressions thoughtful, somehow resigned.
Warm now, they lift from their perches,
flap heavy bodies into the sky. Long fingers
of primaries spread to currents of wind,
brown wings gild in the sun
as these bald heroes teeter and sway
in winged V’s, catch rising drafts of air,
circle to begin their daily desert scan,
seeking fresh death, odors of decay.
© Karen Jones