The Dark Tree - A poem

It swayed and creaked in
the wind.
The black silken crows
gave a queer semblance of
life to the tree,
Its bare branches covered
with a multitude perched like
the clinging of leaves.
It swayed and it creaked
and spoke of its sins,
Dark feathers fluttered,
as if to fool a passerby’s eye
that life still dwelt in the trees dead limbs.
None made a sound, not a caw
not a screech, no utterance did they speak;
for you see they had been given a task long ago,
to bear silent witness to the migration
of lost souls.
For no man,
should ever die alone.
So they perched and they preened
as the body swayed and creaked
on the rope below.
by Philip Wardlow