Nyx Unnested by Krista Canterbury Adams

We perch,
We lie in monstrous guise,
Fluttering.
 
Above the heavy dreaming-smoke,
The moonless night comes close,
With starry crowns,
 
Over the tops of the birch trees.
 
We watch the western sky
Where she approaches, swift of feet—
A goddess waking
In blue and black,
 
Hanging above
Our hundred fires.
 
In procession,
We step
Among the swaying trees,
Burning incense of cypress,
Withered snowdrops,
Dried husk of flaming poppy—
 
And among the fires chanting
Ancient funerary songs,
With voices locked and rising,
We suck at the bodies of the dead.
 
On every side,
The fall of heavy mist,
Like owls which stretch and
Flutter in quiet,
 
Dusty wings sending showers up,
Showers up of embers,
 
To light where we grasp,
Grab at the void—
 
At the blackest space where the moon should shine.

*

Krista Canterbury Adams has studied poetry at Ohio Dominican University and The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Her poem “Resurrection” has been published in print and online. She has a six-poem series due to be printed this spring in AHF Magazine.