The crow was dead. No doubt about it.
The dark-feathered wreckage of his body
proclaimed his undeniable demise.
The corpse preternaturally displayed
to public view, half way up a tree,
wings outstretched, as if caught in flight.
A sovereign perhaps, deposed by his foes,
cursed by Corvid law to die an outcast
stripped of title, lands, and crown.
Had he tumbled like a de-frocked cleric
from his lofty pulpit to breathe his last,
impaled on a branch in sight of the ground?
Or been tried for some imagined crime,
a malefactor condemned by the mob,
crucified like Saint Peter, upside-down?
None stepped forward to testify the truth
of this gruesome death and fealty forsworn,
and none (save I) stayed back to mourn.
© Geoff Mead 2017
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