PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

On this winter night, while the lovers

explored the peaks of pleasure with each other,

one scented candle burned long into the night

until it had burned itself away, and its light

expired in a single sputter,

like a drunk rolled to death in a gutter,

like dying stars extinguished in outer space.

Even the lovers, themselves, may soon be extinguished---

are they subversives, layabouts, secretly Orthodox Christians,

partisans of the murdered Romanovs, or even a

couple of long-haired, slender, noticeably petit bourgeois boys?

Still the candle's fragrance continues to ascend

toward the ceiling, and into the crevices, really throughout the place;

it need not struggle, again, nor even contend

with the compulsion and demand of gravity,

but approaches the condition and meaning of incense,

with neither presumption nor pretense,

but soars upward like a soul eager to avoid

besetments on the way to Christ's Heaven, where the Lord is enjoyed.

Starward

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