Why carp about its appetite?
Post-feast, it reels around the corpse
still inflected with flies and the ship-like,
collapsing ribs inverted in the sand.

And while it considers lift off
with its phalanx of dissectors
and feasters, it drowses, anchored—stranded—
by its own belly. Still, one admires

the homely extemporizer,
its dinosaur face and bald crown,
playing at the sinews of its chow,
which is considerable (an entire cow),

and bayoneting with its beak
the hide so as to scoop the pulp
and heart. Its vast hunger is not absurd,
but serviceable; living on its meal

for days, it’s free of self-offense,
alert not to the guilt that trails
great need, but to the angles of its wings
and the winds that fan its collar of fringe.