Candle Night (Reading)
By Rowland Hughes
Featured in New Lyre - Winter 2023
Candle Night
Dangerous to touch,
yet tempting me to step into a world
of memories.
And in a darkened room,
when my eyes accustom to its halo of light,
It takes me places I know,
and places I don’t. The spinning wheel
of my imagination gives me a landscape
of imagined trees,
a mystery of roses and the shadows
of a vulnerable child.
Though there is more than one child,
as there is more than one childhood.
Age has given me a choice to push aside
the dark interiors of my mind.
There are moments trapped in the flame
that exist to taunt me, black horizons
painted on a nursery wall.
Yes, the candlelight has its own soul,
not related to mine.
And there are no destinations left in its flame,
only a confusion of light and dark.
But roses still grow secretly below the trees,
buried underground, in a place only I can see.
Rowland Hughes is a Welsh writer and poet. He was born, and lived until his late teens, in the Rhondda Valley, from where he still draws most of his inspiration. He worked as a Master Decorator and studied trades in the construction industry. He later became a Local Authority Assistant Surveyor. Due to ill health, he retired in 1997. In 1998, he joined a Cardiff University Creative Writing Group. He loves to observe people, places and nature, writing in bustling cafés and the confines of his writing shed.
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