It swoops low through the branches at the bottom edge of the yard. It’s big, I see that. And black. It rounds a slow sloop just in front of the cedar. Up the hill still rounding the short side of an arc and facing me now. I see the dark fingered edges of his wings, the golden triangle of a beak that seems to hang beneath a lavendar-red head bent low. The wings beat like a funeral march, but silent…silent. He turns just as I start to fear a collision, passes ten feet in front of me, eye-level; I swear his eyes stay on me as he passes.
Turkey vulture. Why so close to me, I wonder, then I think; was he circling just above me?
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology