The Falling Rocket by Megan Windom

Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket

by James Abbott McNeil Whistler

 

The Falling Rocket by Megan Windom

The day has slowed its rhythm into the

soft monotone blues and greens stretching out,

blending sky to land to water.  Though night

creeps in like a heavy shroud to cover

the city as it passes into sleep,

speckled light breaks through the evening haze,

the displays of the living not ready

to give into the quiet of the dark.

Fires burn on the distant shores. They dance.

Their energy returned to them by the

exuberant demonstrations of the

bay that shadows each excessive gesture

and adds its own nocturnal vibrato.

Somewhere in this gentle struggle between

sleep and wakefulness, between crescendos

 that escalate to a frantic cadence

and the sweet decrescendos that lure the

tired back into their supple, warm beds,

a flame is ignited and sent reeling

upward. Swallowed by the night, the rocket

disappears. But it leaves its marks across

the sky.  A shower of glittering flames

suspended in the air, gold against black.

A solitary figure watches from

the shore, her red coat cinched tight at her neck.

The day puts up its last fight against night,

but even the rocket falls soundlessly

toward the bay’s adagio rhythm

where it fades away and finally rests.