Upon Seeing A Dead Crow On My Walk Poem by R K Summers

It happened on my way to work this morning
Plugged in and barely awake
The cool crisp mist melting on my warm face
Dreading the day to come
When I saw him, lying sprawled
On the dewy green
Beneath the bare naked limbs of a tree

His face was buried in the grass
His wings were spread wide
As though still in flight
Prone

I began to wonder
What made him fall?
What caused this beautiful charcoal prince to slip
From the sky into the green arms of sleep?
How did this obsidian lord fail?
His glittering eyes of blackest diamonds
And his gleaming feathers of ebony
Finally fallen prey to
The clip of a crossbow across the wing
Or the claw of a feline through the breast
Or the slow decline of avian disease
That purged his magical and lordly body

I wondered if he should be buried
And give his body back to Gaia
No doubt the cats would see to him first
Such a pitiful end
For such a graceful, aerial majesty.