I Light a Candle

by Oonah V. Joslin

 

I light a candle

there’s no need

except for flickering warmth and dancing fire

 

I light a candle watch the primal space that is infrared

with scientific detachment

 

My candle is not tallow spermaceti or beeswax but a hydrocarbon

by-product of ocean-bed

 

long dead; not very romantic,

 not very devotional.

I will mark off

feast days in candle hours

 

invest festive emotion

into each illumination;

invoke times past

and eke the darks days out

 

with thoughts of

 loved ones gone

and loved ones far

and near. Year on year

 

I light a candle.

There’s no need

except the heart’s deep yearning

for some ancestral hearth.