Rapture
BY C.M. HEWITT
To be taken, the rainbow trout a raptor
lifts from the lake, to be a vowel
away from rupture—vein, volcano, Shelley
ululating O wild West Wind, thou
breath of Autumn’s being—to spin in a raft
down whitewater rapids emulates
the vertigo of feeling the Ouija board
planchette swerve unequivocally
on its own to spell Ahoy from the vertex
every star beam someday intersects.
Sipping a frosted glass of Sauvignon Blanc
at Hosmer Vineyards and Winery,
how cool to be swayed by the sommelier
who says the wines in the Finger Lakes
match those in France, for the finest victory
is won through a willing surrender,
plunging the nose into the glass for a whiff
of the apple-nectarine bouquet—
one of the terms for a flock of hummingbirds.
Imagine watching ruby-throated
summer migrants in Texas suck the feeder
dry and then scatter the way a prism,
hung from the lock of a window sash, fires
rainbow shrapnel onto the kitchen
counter, the fridge, the wall, showing no mercy,
never expressing thank you in French,
wrapping the world in the spectrum it unwinds.
After the Rapture, when the faithful
have been lifted away, we’ll know who they are
as newspapers pile up in their lawns.