! ! Candlelight

So many bees, who know so much that only bees can tell, gave their life’s devotion to this single source of light; silent whisper for your attention to what it has to tell your sight, before its substance burns, returns into the upper air… gently burns on altar, or scented in the bathroom’s grace; or here in front of you, gentle hypnotist for the wandering mind; to which it has so much to tell.. tells of humility; gently burning in a stable, before a birth; tells of loving-kindness; gives itself, yet asks for nothing but to be itself; tells of worship: worship, first, of what the bees are; and here in this honey-coloured form is their own worship; waxing silent in murmured devotion; warming miraculously, into liquid wax; only love can be so liquid; only love can reach so far; liquid, warmed into this present light: the candle’s flame you know so well yet cannot shape or hold; already, candle hints to you that there is that beyond all sense: for round its light, air’s gently warmed: drawing the flame itself into the invisible above like the soul that’s yearning for its homeland; and beyond, within, that air you cannot see unless it moves some other thing, it lights the space – space which is not bathroom, altar; but all space; candle tells you of all that; draws the mind with steady, silent truth to all creation in a single flame; flame that asks for naught of you but your attention; which it will reward by telling you in stillness, what you worship in yourself; the light of self, that shines before all men and glorifies its maker like a gentle flame that cannot be put out.