Good Authority by James Brush

I always thought
they’d like death metal,
but I’ve got it on good authority
vultures prefer smooth jazz.

Ambulance rides can be rough;
vultures know this and relax.
Watching the highway, they know
everyone gets his turn.

Turkey Vultures can smell a corpse
from hundreds of feet up. Outflying
Cessnas they arrive first on the scene.

Black Vultures follow, pushing
the solitary Turkeys to the rotting edges.

The Black Vultures brag that by traveling
together they’ve learned to attack
and kill small animals: calves and possums.
Straightening their ties, they discuss
elaborate plans to go public. Someday, they claim,
they will become hawks or eagles.

The Turkey Vulture listens to this talk,
wondering if he too will evolve.


James Brush, Texas, USA

My Tourist Yard by James Brush

They show up in April with the cowbirds
and the red wings, all the icterids returning.

By June they’re hoarding the feeders,
the birdbaths and the lawn, clucking

in the trees and teaching their young.
By August they’ve returned to the parking lot

at the grocery store, handing the keys to the yard
back to the chickadees and titmice who,

more deferential, somehow seem a little
sweeter than their noisy cousins who only

summer here, throw their cash around and
leave without learning the culture or our ways.


James Brush, Texas, USA

A Texas Highway in Springtime by James Brush

The soaring hawks who patrolled this highway
through the winter watched as wildflowers grew.
As if the sky were napping on the earth,
the fields in spring explode in deepest blue.

Fields mirror sky and fill with the shadows
of hawks and vultures flying through flowers.
Bipedal hairless apes swarm through the fields,
teeth bared, pointing rectangles at each other.

In just a few more weeks, the bluebonnets
will wither and be swallowed by the grass.
Then the soaring hawks will get their fields back
as, ignoring green, the apes just drive on past.




James Brush, Texas, USA