Just when snowdrops
are raising their bright lantern heads
over the tombs of the Victorian dead*
the corvid clans are gathering.
Westerlies fingering wings, crow black,
assembly of rooks and jacks*
atop the churchyard's plane trees.
Revamping unkempt nests, they mingle
in raucous verse and hymnal
as the morning parishioners arrive.
I come in praise of the madding couples
and seeing their obsidian huddles
their ritual rites of return, give thanks.
These congregants are first to the vernal switch
as natural as the massed graves over which
their broods will feed and fledge. or die.
Ever hopeful of the Spring breakthrough
I look to where rookeries will renew.
- a Victorian custom to plant snowdrops on graves after the Crimean war when soldiers returned with bulbs from the shores of the Black Sea. The flowers have since colonised our churchyards
- aka Daws, jackdaws, smaller corvids that often nest within or alongside rookeries.
For Kim’s Poetics prompt: The Optician’s Words she has given us a selection of lines from the eye test list to choose from and include in our poem as here with crow – verse – see – renew
PoetryPix 