Late yesterday afternoon, we went out for drinks with our cute, young friend Sarah.  The restaurant has a large patio, and the afternoon was warm.  We were all on different rhythms: for Sarah it was two drinks and no food, for me, one drink and half a plate of appetizers, and for Mohamed, one drink, the other half of the appetizers, and an entrée.  Towards the end of our stay, the conversation turned back to cancer, our reactions to the initial diagnosis, and our feelings now.  I said that sometimes I feel a little strange, almost guilty, though that's much too strong, for being so seemingly healthy.  The initial prognosis was so dire that everyone showed immediate concern: tears from friends, lots of visits with casseroles and pies, a certain awkwardness.  When I first started doing the blog, I wrote lots of entries about death, dying, and atheism.  But it's been two years since then, and I look and feel generally pretty healthy.  I said aloud for the first time that what I really wanted was to live long enough to see Mohamed graduate.  But now he's only 15 hours from that goal, and my condition hasn't really changed for the last year, so that sounds somewhat melodramatic. 

As we were having this cheerful conversation, suddenly five large buzzards or vultures, whichever we have in Kansas, appeared in the sky, lazily circling over the patio.  If I believed in omens, this wouldn't have been encouraging.  Sarah mentioned a culture that valorized vultures because they did the work that no one else wanted to do: they kept nature new.  And that made me think of one of my all-time favorite poems, "Still, Citizen Sparrow" by Richard Wilbur, which makes exactly that point.

Still, citizen sparrow, this vulture which you call
Unnatural, let him but lumber again to air
Over the rotten office, let him bear
The carrion ballast up, and at the tall 

Tip of the sky lie cruising. Then you'll see
That no more beautiful bird is in heaven's height,
No wider more placid wings, no watchfuller flight;
He shoulders nature there, the frightfully free, The naked-headed one. Pardon him, you
Who dart in the orchard aisles, for it is he
Devours death, mocks mutability,
Has heart to make an end, keeps nature new. 

Thinking of Noah, childheart, try to forget
How for so many bedlam hours his saw
Soured the song of birds with its wheezy gnaw,
And the slam of his hammer all the day beset 

The people's ears. Forget that he could bear
To see the towns like coral under the keel,
And the fields so dismal deep. Try rather to feel
How high and weary it was, on the waters where

He rocked his only world, and everyone's.
Forgive the hero, you who would have died
Gladly with all you knew; he rode that tide
To Ararat, all men are Noah's sons.  

 The poem begins in the middle of a discussion between the speaker and a sparrow (hardly the most glamourous of birds), which has argued that what the vulture does is 'unnatural.'  The speaker's three alliterative words of address are respectful enough and acknowledge that the vulture's ascent is less than graceful.  But once the vulture is in the sky, its ballast carrion, the description of the flight--also marked by pronounced alliteration and contrasted with the "dart[ing] in orchard aisles" of the sparrow--is one of alloyed and beautiful praise for the bird's watchfulness, its grace, its natural burden of renewing nature.  (And what is the sparrow doing if not looking for worms to devour?)

The turn in the poem comes in stanza four.  Just as Wilbur has reversed our initial unfavorable opinion of the vulture, he shifts our perspective on Noah, though in the opposite direction.  Most readers begin thinking of Noah positively, but the focus here is on the time when Noah is building the ark, the "bedlam hours" when "his saw / Soured the song of birds with its wheezy gnaw."  The sound of the lines is nearly as ugly as the sounds of Noah's saw and hammer.  And then, once the reader has had second thoughts about Noah, the new point of view is modified once again, as Noah, like the vulture, is portrayed as one who has the heart to renew the world, to put death in perspective and mock mutability.

The vultures or buzzards that circled the patio last night weren't omens.   They were beautiful birds "making lazy circles in the sky."  Wings spread wide, they scoured the landscape, ready to devour death and keep nature new.