Daily Create, Poetry

Candles Burn Out

January 11, 2015
69 views
2 min read
6 comments
Facebook Twitter Reddit Pinterest Email
They say you and I are melting wax--our lives have leapt and flared...

Describe Something You Love

The Daily Create for today, January 11, 2015, is:
“Write a blurb about something you love but don’t say what it is until the end. Keep your audience guessing until you finally reveal what it was that you were talking about.”
I don’t actually know what a “blurb” might mean in this context as I associate blurbs with author endorsements on book jackets. However, this being DS 106, I felt free to reinterpret the genre of this challenge as a poem.
It is Sunday, I’m on the couch all day with a killer sinus infection (which accounts for the mood of the poem) , so I had the time to count out the pentameter (five beats per line) on my fingers and to work out the somewhat non-standard rhyme scheme (abba, cdcd, efef).
I came up two lines short of a 14 line sonnet, but I had run out of things to say, and anyway, there is such a thing as a twelve line sonnet, which I proclaim this to be.
 
candles
I started by trying to describe these candles without saying what they are. They are in silver candlesticks that come from Peter’s parents, Bill and Marion, and currently they are on the bare “lake of wood” of the dining room table.

Candles Burn Out

Two silver hands rising from the lake
of wood, fingers lightly clasping
the tapered arms reaching like the aspen
trees in fall, the way their leaves shake

aspenalive with light, forest dancers blazing–
or miniature suns, or passionflowers
incandescent as the stars and trembling,
waiting for the match, those lucent hours.

Sandy Candle They say you and I are melting wax–
our lives have leapt and flared, but in the end

Peter_candle

 only Love, that Light, will stay intact
as we blow out like candles in the wind.

 

Sandy Brown Jensen

I am a retired writing instructor and faculty tech specialist from Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon. I still teach and am also a photographer, poet, blogger and digital storyteller (short videos).

View all posts

6 comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Sandy Brown Jensen

I am a retired writing instructor and faculty tech specialist from Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon. I still teach and am also a photographer, poet, blogger and digital storyteller (short videos).

View all posts