Three Starlings

In the bare upper branches
of a still-standing, colonial-era
hanging tree recruited, reputedly,
for intransigent young blacks, perch
three starlings, widely spaced, still
as the winter afternoon, silent
as a boy left lynched, stiff
in a hunkered-down way
that suggests they will
not fly away from this
strangled place until—
as they bear
hard witness to all things
here below—
they find reason and reason and reason
to sing.