Shrouds

A dark swooping shadow caught the corner of my eye during the early morning cereal at my table at the window. I had been spending the quiet weekend all alone and thinking how crisply blue the sky was after the winter thunderstorm which woke me and my three thousand neighbors, the Canadian geese, the previous night. I looked to the area against the blue sky and found this shaggy and brooding sentinel of death. Two comrades joined him in the barren gray trees within seconds. The last one's landing broke loose shards of bark and a dry branch went plummeting to the ground. The whole harshness of their arrival seemed apropros of their presence. In all fairness their role in the grand scheme as garbage collectors was important. But I could not see any beauty in that red-rimmed eye no matter how fair I tried to be in my thoughts. They remained for several minutes casting a mantle of melancholy over all.