Two Poems by John Muro

Vultures

Welling up from ditches
like caretakers of loss,
they ride thermals
with large eye-lashes
for wings and long-
stemmed fingers
delicate as coal dust;
relishing the idle drift
into black kettles of air,
travelling half asleep
for miles in search of
food using only wind
for lift. Disciples of decay,
they nest with death
and indulge a life of
dark leisure, as meals
arrive without effort,
wind dispersing the
curious odors of carrion
and neglect from farther
fields, back roads or dumps.
Roosting in barren trees,
their naked heads appear
like enflamed gullets,
drowned in the colors
of garnet red or weather-
worn brick, stripped of
both feathers and flesh,
like the lives that still
follow them, weight-
less, up into alien air.

Apparition

Disheveled autumn’s deftly
side-stepped winter’s grasp,
carrying in wide, blousy
pockets slumbering bees, brittle
nests and the easy currency of
pungent musk lifted from tea-
brown pools of leaf-rot and
acres of decay. Arrives poorly
attired in a worn, tweed cap
and thinning hair, mud-caked
shoes and a shawl of drab-scarlet
woven from wool, blithely
traipses through the well-worn
paths of woodlands, dank ruts
of orchard and rain-glazed
pasture, and, bojangle-brazen,
turns wind-ward and pivots
on his crooked walking stick
as he nimbly rises and entwines
with phantom light, pauses amid
the mottled luster of leaf-scatter,
drinks in the bright applause
of interloper crows and then
bows meekly before sauntering
off into the upsweep of gray
gusts like a happy grief.

John Muro is a resident of Connecticut and a two-time 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee. His first volume of poems, In the Lilac Hour, was published by Antrim House (2020) and is available on Amazon. John’s poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Barnstorm, Euphony, Grey Sparrow, Moria, Sky Island and Sparks of Calliope. Pastoral Suite, John’s second volume of poems will be published this spring. You can contact John via Instagram @johntmuro.