Rooks

Where are you going to, rooks, to where?

  Flying along in the evening sky,

By three and by four, by the dozen or pair,

  Like black tattered rags that the wind blows by.

 

A clear winter's day and the sun going down,

  The endless procession goes ambling along,

Heading south-easterly over the town,

  Random, persistent, a straggle, a throng.

 

Some say they're the souls of the unburied dead,

  Eternally doomed to go wandering on,

Seeking a pardon forever unsaid,                         

  Fleeing the unholy deeds they have done.

 

Still they keep coming, on high, on high,

  Disparate groups in the evening air,

And I am the only one watching them fly.

  Where are you going to, rooks, to where?

 

by Philip Dunkerley ©