Candle Work

The soul grows by subtraction, not addition – Meister Eckhart

Look, I said, here

we are conducting

ourselves according to

the statutes, according

to nature’s prophecies,

the laws of stumps and

worms and seeds.

It’s the only way we 

can enter the vast array 

from birth to mystery.

We can’t engage what

we can’t breathe. 

We can’t notice more

than what we feel. 

We can’t take on what

has been made without 

first taking on ourselves. 

Still, we feast on 

newborn oxygen 

and daily bread. 

We labor in small 

towns. We fertilize 

faceless ideas no

bigger than weeds

to help us get by.

In these days of angels, 

we strive to go deeper

than we know how

to see. We change 

out of earthly clothes,

our voices turn silent

at last and we learn

from blank pages the

source of all beginning.