Today’s New Verse News: FOR EVERY LOST SOUL, A CANDLE
by Mary K O'Melveny
Glowing Christmas candle in frosted home window, photograph by Thomas Baker —Fine Art America
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For every lost soul, a candle in the window spills its light into dusky night. Darkening air softens with hope’s holiday aromas—sage, balsam, fir, spruce. Its flame offers a mirror into a forest’s beating heart, warming deep woods where easy pathways have slipped past sight, obscured by doubt, loss. Its flickered patterns soothe us as we glance inside into a world beyond our reach. We want to see our own reflections there, as if we had struck the match, poured a glass of claret, turned on seasonal carols, smiled at loved ones gathered fireside. Not the other side where time fells us. Where its passage startles us anew as memories sparkle, seduce us for an instant before they waiver, then devolve to our collective umbra.
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Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY. Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her most recent poetry collection is Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum, just out from Kelsay Books. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.