The Waiting

THE WAITING

The Turkey Vultures perched waiting for what the sea would bring. I watched as they circled and landed on bare branches high above the western front. The wind came first. It carried the smell of salt and the promise of decay. The birds did not stir at first. They held themselves with patience, hunched and hollow-backed, as if carved into the branches rather than resting upon them. But they had a purpose. They were not watching the sea for beauty or change. They were waiting for what it would surrender—bloated fish, broken gulls, the unclaimed bodies of things the tide had taken and returned. I stood for a while watching and found myself waiting, too, to witness the vultures descend without hesitation, their shadows crossing one another like moving branches, and I like a silent witness.

Photograph by Robert David Atkinson