Crows In Snow (A Dirge) Poem by R. H. Peat

Crows In the Snow

All day around this slim wooden box
they have slowly gathered like frail
cut ribbons in their coal-black suits.

With blink-tilted eye they rasp their
slit voices—hoarse and chipped with silt.
Crests shiver within the clotted cold,

while the shrouding flakes harshly fall
beside their wintry tar-paper silhouettes.
Pushed hard toward the squinted light,

they mingle in scattered idle clumps
next to the box's narrow-lumbered walls
caught inside that silent rambled thump.

Even now in the lilt-drifting snow
they move like pointed puppet-shadows
against the intense numbing white.

A circle huddles in stump-starkness
to approach that open box again
only to turn their backs to its mantle.

They amble or stand afraid to fly
for they are attached to some leaden
memory frozen within the crusted sheet.

© R. H. Peat 2 - 24-2010
Form: Ekphrasis Dirge: 7 tercets,21 lines
Metaphor: The funeral ceremony
Published: England, 'Poetic Bond IV' Pg.56
Willowdown Books 2014