Four vultures place a practiced foot 

against flesh, brace to tear bone

skull and spine

of a small grey seal, maybe one month in the world

scored by wind and sun 

where the tide withdrew

and mud strands itself.

It’s the birthing season.

Seals gravid, find harbor

where water laps quiet and sun warmed.

In the lagoon one voice is raised

the same question, over and over

one wet bullet of a head, the others draped long on the bars.

I’ve been knowing such a day would come,

afternoons seeing those rafts of newborns

shadows along their mother’s large sides

pulling milk, resting under careful limbs… 

Now these four down low on the water’s edge tell: 

the wound is fresh but beyond all saving

So I walk my son from the car to witness

by clammer-dug ditches like ropes strung taut

between shore and water,  

we eel into the mud, sinking and stop.

In the channel’s plunge the mother

calling, casting the silence,

her shrill echoes those early nights with my boy–

he was ours, if we could keep him.

Pulled by the moon’s rise

the carrion birds work until the tide

heaves to the rushes and the willow roots

and carries the child past his mother

and into the sea

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