Fall of the Crow Tree

Two houses over from mine, and you couldn't miss it.  It had to be the tallest tree in the immediate neighborhood.  I had a great view of it from my kitchen windows.  My next door neighbor's house blocked the view of the bottom half of the tree, but it towered over the roofline.  The tip of the tree must have been about ten feet higher than the next highest one beside it.

The species is unknown to me.  All I could tell was that it was straight and slender, probably as a result of being surrounded by other trees.  The top of it was sharp, the few branches angled gracefully upward into a fairly compact radius.

The best part of that tree was the birds, I think.  Very often a small group, usually five or so, would alight on the top branches and hang there swaying in the breezes.  Robins and starlings, maybe, but definitely some crows.  The crows looked wonderfully portentous on cloudy days with wind.  The black outlines stood out against the sky like sheet music for some delightfully scary opera.  My guess is the view was spectacular.

Most mornings I made sure to take a look at the crow tree.  The tip a cathedral spire on a golden sunny day.

The Crow Tree was a landmark, and I hoped it would be around for many more years.  Nature had other ideas, in the form of  a sucker punch landed during a severe windstorm earlier this month.  I looked out the window one morning, and it was gone.  I did a double take.  Yep, gone.  Not all the way gone; when it blew over, it got hung up on an adjacent tree.  I suspect my neighbors haven't quite figured out how to remove it yet.  It was a tree most tall.  Still is, even in repose, languishing in the arms of another.

I can see it there, atilt and wondering, and I wonder myself at what the crows must think.