Candles yearn and flutter
in the sacred gloom
stained glass glows
like coals and cobalt
yesterday’s incense
ghosts into your nostrils.
Two pews down an elegant woman
is summoned by the phone
below her steepled fingers
its pale oblong awakes
to interrupt her prayers
or answer them.
The dead the lost
and those close by are calling
wanting and wanted
summoned and summoning
close as the touch screen
or the pale wax of the tapers –
some newly lit and long,
others slim stubs
held in the sand of the bowl.
The one I lit for you
has half its life to go.
℘℘℘℘
Chris Ringrose is a poet and fiction writer living in Melbourne, Australia. His latest poetry collection is Palmistry (ICoE Press, 2019). Creative Lives, a collection of interviews with South Asian Writers, was published by Columbia UP in 2021.
Art/s and Theology Australia 