Janet Lynn Davis lives in Houston, Texas, where she is "retired"
from a career in marketing communications and publications for
industry. While she has been interested in creative writing ever since she
could hold a pencil, she only recently has focused on the craft of poetry.
Her work has begun to appear in various Web-based magazines.

The Vultures

Only a yard or two and a barrier
of extra-strength window glass
separated me from them
as I managed the obligatory
post-surgery stretch down the hall—
the diseased organ ripped
from my body just hours before.

They were two elderly men
on a low corner of hospital roof,
hunched beneath overcast sky,
taking a smoke between courses.

We revile them. Winged warlocks,
we call them, these other-world scavengers.

Yet we revere them. They sense
the nearness of death long before
     the white coats do.