A slender finger of light dances in the breeze, Shiva’s nail scratching the darkness. A cat lies in the sun, sharpens, her claws, stretches, yawns, her become jewels in the night. Phosphor fire. Either fear or science will make an excuse for her eyes. Retinal mirror scrying the soul.
Have you ever looked at house windows and seen them as eyes following you as you walk down and unfamiliar street at night? What thoughts arise? But look, a light in the window, harkening back to centuries before. Someone placed a candle in the window, so that the dearly departed could find their way back home.
Candlelight in each window, the flickering pupil, sentient, ever watching. The hurricane lamp from the turret for sailors coming in from the sea. Bonfires on the hill. Markers of time. Names for surcease, for that dark moment when lights no longer drink in the darkness.
That solstice when the sun sleeps, when we light the candles, and the moths circling the fire, confuse them for the stars. The odor of wings like burning hair, angel hair, when the rain comes when we’re weaned from the electric grid, freed from the tyranny of Edison’s light dream, the candle becomes a ritual for dinner, reduced to romantic interludes or for religious reasons.
Or birthdays, marking the passage of time, or the big bang. Dangerous candles, soaring light tapers for the church, split an atom, a sesame seed of blue light, a seed pearl at the center of everything. Imagine a flashlight as a placeholder in its stead. Imagine the inventor of the candle. What did he use for wicks dipped in tallow and honey.
12/10/2004 Writers’ Group
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