Featured Poet -  Carl Papa Palmer

AN ODE TO HER CANDLE

So many candles I’ve never burned.

A marriage candle, 

two first communion candles from my kids,

a bicentennial candle, 

millennium candle. 

So many candles I’ve never burned.

Her candle I’ve burned for over twenty years,

not every day, but most every day. 

A memory of what once was,

of what we had

me and her,

her candle.

Originally voluptuously large,

beautifully ornate,

burning bright hot and fast.

We were young then. 

Gradually her candle grew old,

became hollow.

Most of the outside still holding fast, 

dusty with age,

the wick long lost,

in darkness temporarily filled 

with a tea light candle.

Certain songs, movies or moods 

rekindle the freshness, 

remind me of when her candle was new. 

In the light of day reality blazes,

her candle actually an empty shell. 

So hard to visualize as it once was, 

as in last night’s memory.

Beginning to wonder, 

continuing to wonder,

if, after all this time, 

I shouldn’t just throw it out.

This foolish vigil,

this senseless old man, 

end this memorial, 

this ritual and move on. 

But, as the room grows dark, 

the many candles I’ve never burned 

remain so. 

A new tea light candle 

and she is back.

We, me and her, 

her candle 

and my thoughts

of twenty years ago.



LEFT UNSAID

As I enter his room

he focuses upon me,

silently begging me not to ask

of his absent roommate.

Empty bed freshly made,

side table tidy and neat, 

surrounding area cleared

of anything personal

in that part of the hospital 

where patients go missing.

CORDIALLY YOURS

Sitting on her couch,

my mother-in-law 

now with dementia

has forgotten who I am,

greets me like a stranger,

treats this stranger better

than she ever treated me.

I yearn for her glower,

that glint of disgust,

the biting sneer,

refusal to say anything

nice to me at all.

HER NEW ROOM

The three room house was small 

where she raised her five children,

no rooms as small as her new room.

She lived in her house fifty-two years,

but only for a couple of months 

now in her new room.

She loomed large in her small house,

yet now seems so tiny

in the corner of her new room.

Her house held the aroma of flower sachet

with smells of delicious wonderment 

flowing warmly from her kitchen.

Her new room has the reek of medicine

with an underlying odor

of pine oil disinfectant.

She seemed to know everyone

wherever she went

and everyone knew her.

Today she needs to be reminded

of her daughter’s name, sitting

beside her, holding her hand.

Waiting in her new room

she asks once more

if it’s time to go back home.