The Rooks of Rapture

The moon, like a cataract 
in the eye of night,
casts her milky tract
of light on a rookery of nests;
their twiggy bulks seem to rest
in the fingertips of branches.

Below, the night’s chill breath
petrifies fierce arum spears
still clenched tight like fists
where death has left its 
earthy taint among bits
of rapture from the rookery,

splinters of moonlight
and the remains of night.

Kim M. Russell, 27th April 2023

Image by Sylvain Brison on Unsplash

It’s Thursday, day twenty-seven of NaPoWriMo, and the optional daily prompt was inspired by Bernadette Mayer’s poem ‘The Lobelias of Fear’. The challenge is to write our own poems entitled ‘“The ________ of ________’, in which the first blank is a very particular kind of plant or animal, and the second blank is an abstract noun. Poems should contain at least one simile that plays on double meanings or otherwise doesn’t quite make ‘sense’, and describe things or beings from very different times or places as co-existing in the same space.