KTD 10-Day Teachings/Song of the Turkey Buzzard

Turkey Vulture, photo by Elizabeth Barakah Hodges

Back in the 1980s, when I was working as a program assistant for the University Extension division of the University of California at Berkeley, I made the mistake of reading Lew Welch’s poem Song of the Turkey Buzzard on my lunch hour.

I say “mistake” because the poem—in which Welch predicts his own suicide and sky burial—had a profound emotional effect on me, and I went into what I can only describe as some kind of altered state for about four hours. In short—I was useless at my job that afternoon.

In Tibet, where the ground is often too frozen to allow for burial and where firewood for cremations can be scarce, one way that the dead are “buried” is through what is called sky burial—ritual dismemberment of the corpse, the parts of which are then consumed by vultures.

So I was stunned to hear the following story, tacked onto one of the morning teachings by Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche as a seemingly impromptu embellishment. (Note from AWW: This is not a verbatim transcript.)

In Tibet, the people who prepare bodies for sky burial are chod practitioners who do practice for the people who have died.

The birds that eat the bodies are considered dakas and dakinis, and are remarkable in their behavior.

After people who have earned merit through compassionate actions are dismembered, vultures will encircle the body but not touch it. Another vulture comes from the sky, gives a call, and lands on the center of the body. This vulture does a little dance, and then begins to eat—at which point the other vultures begin to eat, too.

The feast is considered a ganachakra (sacred feast), and the central vulture is the ganachakra master.

Now, many people will think this is a gruesome story, but I think it’s beautiful—and it connected me, immediately, to that experience long ago when I read Song of the Turkey Buzzard for the first time.

So I wonder if Lew Welch provided the food for a ganachakra, never seen by human eyes, out there in the California wilderness so long ago.

SONG OF THE TURKEY BUZZARD

For Rock Scully

who heard it

the first

time

Praises, Tamalpais,

Perfect in Wisdom and Beauty,

She of the Wheeling Birds

I.

The rider riddle is easy to ask,

but the answer might surprise you.

How desperately I wanted Cougar

(I, Leo, etc.)

brilliant proofs: terrain,

color, food, all

nonsense. All made up.

They were always there, the

laziest high-flyers, bronze-winged,

the silent ones

"A cunning man always laughs and smiles,

even if he's desperately hungry,

while a good bird always flies like a vulture,

even if it is starving."

(Milarepa sang)

Over and over again, that sign:

I hit one once, with a .22

heard the "flak" and a feather flew off, he

flapped his wings just once and

went on sailing. Bronze

(when seen from above)

as I have seen them, all day sitting

on a cliff so steep they

circled below me, in the up-draft

passed so close I could see his

eye.

Praises, Tamalpais,

Perfect in Wisdom and Beauty,

She of the Wheeling Birds

Another time the vision was so clear another saw it, too.

Wet, a hatching bird, the shell of the egg streaked with dry scum,

exhausted, wet, too weak to move the shriveled wings, fierce

sun-heat, sand. Twitching, as with elbows (we all have the same

parts). Beak open, neck stretched, gasping for air. O how we

want to live!

"Poor little bird," she said, "he'll never make it."

Praises, Tamalpais,

Perfect in Wisdom and Beauty,

She of the Wheeling Birds

Even so, I didn't get it for a long long while. It finally came

in a trance, a coma, half in sleep and half in fever-mind. A Turkey

Buzzard, wounded, found by a rock on the mountain. He wanted

to die alone. I had never seen one, wild, so close. When I reached

out, he sidled away, head drooping, as dizzy as I was. I put my

hands on his wing-shoulders and lifted him. He tried, feebly, to

tear at my hands with his beak. He tore my flesh too slightly to

make any difference. Then he tried to heave his great wings. Weak

as he was, I could barely hold him.

A drunken veterinarian found a festering bullet in his side,

a .22 that slid between the great bronze scales his feathers were.

We removed it and cleansed the wound.

Finally he ate the rotten gophers I trapped and prepared

for him. Even at first, he drank a lot of water. My dog seemed

frightened of him.

They smell sweet

meat is dry on their talons

The very opposite of

death

bird of re-birth

Buzzard

meat is rotten meat made

sweet again and

lean, unkillable, wing-locked

soarer till he's but a

speck in the highest sky

infallible

eye finds Feast! on

baked concrete

free!

squashed rabbit ripened:

our good cheese

(to keep the highways clean, and bother no Being )

II.

Praises Gentle Tamalpais

Perfect in Wisdom and Beauty of the

sweetest water

and the soaring birds

great seas at the feet of thy cliffs

Hear my last Will & Testament:

Among my friends there shall always be

one with proper instructions

for my continuance.

Let no one grieve.

I shall have used it all up

used up every bit of it.

What an extravagance!

What a relief!

On a marked rock, following his orders,

place my meat.

All care must be taken not to

frighten the natives of this

barbarous land, who

will not let us die, even,

as we wish.

With proper ceremony disembowel what I

no longer need, that it might more quickly

rot and tempt

my new form

-

NOT THE BRONZE CASKET BUT THE BRAZEN WING

SOARING FOREVER ABOVE THEE O PERFECT

O SWEETEST WATER O GLORIOUS

WHEELING

BIRD

(From "Ring of Bone" by Lew Welch, Grey Fox Press, Bolinas, California)