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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