When the Snow Melted

Down by the creek, near where I cross every day on my walk, stands a huge sweet gum tree. For as long as I can remember, the tree has shown signs of disease – a big gaping hole at the base and fissures that extend up the trunk. Nevertheless, it reaches like a rocket, perfectly straight and taller than all the others. A while back, in the dead of winter, I noticed a raccoon had crawled inside the den at the base of the tree and died. She had probably lived there her entire life. But on this day, upon returning from her nightly hunt, exhausted, she laid down for an eternal rest. It snowed soon after, and each time I passed I thought of her. When the snow melted, I left her undisturbed and covered her with leaves and dirt.

With the warmer days and the shallow grave, two vultures found her last week. I saw them fly up from the area several times as I walked by.

More and more I am blessed to see beauty in places and things where I couldn’t see it before: a diseased sweet gum, a dead raccoon, and even those scavengers. I was reminded of this breathtaking poem by David Bottoms, Georgia’s poet laureate from 2000 to 2012.

Under the Vulture-Tree

by David Bottoms

We have all seen them circling pastures,

have looked up from the mouth of a barn, a pine clearing,   

the fences of our own backyards, and have stood   

amazed by the one slow wing beat, the endless dihedral drift.

But I had never seen so many so close, hundreds,   

every limb of the dead oak feathered black,

and I cut the engine, let the river grab the jon boat   

and pull it toward the tree.

The black leaves shined, the pink fruit blossomed   

red, ugly as a human heart.

Then, as I passed under their dream, I saw for the first time   

its soft countenance, the raw fleshy jowls

wrinkled and generous, like the faces of the very old   

who have grown to empathize with everything.

And I drifted away from them, slow, on the pull of the river,   

reluctant, looking back at their roost,   

calling them what I'd never called them, what they are,

those dwarfed transfiguring angels,

who flock to the side of the poisoned fox, the mud turtle

crushed on the shoulder of the road,

who pray over the leaf-graves of the anonymous lost,
with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings.