A candle burns
As does my life
It moves in the breeze
First gently and then not
As do the waves of
My maddening thoughts
It stands straight
Looking to the air for
More light
And then it withers in the darkness
As imagined shadows tell it
Don’t burn so bright
The fire flickers
As if speaking to me
I imagine it to be the
Silent voice of a ghost
Of someone who once sat also
Enjoying a morning prairie view
On these midwestern lands
I look at my hands
That held the match
For this small candle
Finding tiny wrinkles
And brown spots
A gift from the sun’s fiery
Light on my aging skin
Which like my patience
Begins to wear oh so thin
My brightness edging to the
Lower half of my own life’s
Wick
I feel the resistance
When in the morning
These knees sound a light creak
And tense worries rise up in my chest
Sometimes forcing my breath to catch
And sometimes just making me wheeze
I observe the rounding flesh
Right at my middle
It’s too late now to
Contain them with a girdle
A judgment from a two-sided mirror
One man made
The other an image of failed
Womanly perfection
The product of expectations
I challenge silently with a stubborn furor
A candle burns bright
For as long as the god’s of light intend
I sit here thinking of life
And the suicidal death last week of
A younger woman named Gayla
And I write desperately against time
With a firm young pen
A tired hand
A bold heart
But still an aging woman
Frightened by the fire of
Deep suffering in life we
Cannot escape
Watching the fire burn
Watching and waiting for
The next page of her life to turn.
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