Griffin's Buzzard, black folklore's talisman of death, displays cauterized, oozing wings, as if the great African American metaphor of flight has itself become disabled; the scavenger-wizard becomes carrion-fowl. (The buzzard is often described in folktales as unable to plan for or anticipate the nature: in one tale he shivers through rain, muttering that he will build himself a home as soon as the storm passes, then when the sun begins to shine, he convinces himself that the rain will never come back.) The buzzard is dying death: if death is dying, is it then rejuvenating, living again as something new?
