Little Egypt
Counterclockwise
a vulture circles
the point of emptiness
rising above a rotting corpse
once a deer
diluted with distance
until it smells of musk
while at the foot
of a river bluff
in underbrush
a brown thrasher
gets off with the work
of flipping hickory hulls
for the flutter of insect life
as a solicitor fossicks
among old files
in uncontested solitude
the long sifting
of a legal process
drop it drop it
pick it up
pick it up
cover it up
stet
stet
_________________
Devin Johnston
Dragons
Farrar Straus Giroux, 2023
