The Opened Gate

“Lighting one candle

With another, an evening

Of spring….” ~ Buson

A waiting wickless candle — that is I —, . . .

But sacredness finds candle, wick and all.

A curly hymn comes out and not a sigh

Of nuns.  Archangels cause the flame and thrall.

A Dalí wrist with veins becomes the flash

Of love, of love divine, as God alone

Excels.  The room, the world is turned to trash

Or less than that, to nothing.  Love lifts throne

And crowns on M Street, just another block

Of Washington, but . . . in that city rose

The revelation and the perfect shock

Like Saul’s conversion, prophecy of throes.

  Who knew before that moment curls, black

    And clear, would shove religions, dim and slack?

© Phillip Whidden