Charcoal Spirits

A lone black crow sits on a limb of a tree amongst a crowd of trees that surround the townhouses. The trees' silhouettes are drawn on the brick; on the shingled roofs; by the Sun this Late January. The dark shape of the crow is starker than the trees' cast of the night color; it is spectre-like, within the arms of the spectator-like trees. The branches are frosted with yesterday's spitting snowflakes. Their bark is the tint of stones; or the grains of sand on an Irish shore, viewed on the one rainy day of a journey so long ago. A squirrel scurrying up the tree is the same color- of the rough or smooth stone, bleached by the Sun; of the wet sand of the shore in Ireland, whose dunes crouch to watch the tides ebb, to see the pull of the floating Moon. The squirrel blends into the mourning dove tinctures as if he were a captive of the Winter day.. or brushstroked into an oil painting. The crow, hue of a cold desert night, lifts to fly away. The shadows become new shapes in the shifting sunlight.. they become charcoal spirits in her sketch of an agued morn'.