Candle Light
Candle light
softens your features
brings out the bone shape
makes me forget
the minor flaws
of ageing.
Bone shape,
rock shape,
land scape,
your face contours
traced by the flame,
counting the years,
like tree rings.
Beneath the surface
you are as you always were
and always will be.
When I look into your eyes,
I see your soul
dancing in the candle’s flame.
2
… who closes
the museum doors,
locking away its memories
dark descends,
waters heard but unseen
time unmeasured now
until the coming of candles
each with its symbol
lines that mark time
an hour here or there,
never accurate
seldom on time
a time that quickens
in a whisper of wind
the flame flickering
time traveling faster
one candle tilts
its waxen cataracts
tumbling time
cascading down
entering the void
that empty space
left by the spent flame
smouldering
where did it go
the light
I’d like to know
how and why
a lifetime
like a fire-fly’s spark
flits away …
3
… fifteen eighty-eight
the Spanish Armada
its crescent glistening
gunfire sparking
fireflies of flame
ponderous time
spaced out
relentless and slow
an unstoppable juggernaut
on and on
tides turning ebbing
ever-flowing
hill beacons burning
church bells
ringing out their warnings
God blew
and gusting winds
took them away
to the sand-dunes
off the Lowlands coast
flashes of flame
fire-ships launched
fire on the flood
the rigging ablaze
quickly cut anchors
now watch them go
shepherded
by sheepdog ships
on Ireland’s rocky coasts
ships and men
their time up
torn from the light
swallowed by night’s
dark throat …
Carved in Stone
Brief Introduction
“Poetry explains itself. If it doesn’t, it’s inexplicable.” Pedro Salinas.
I entered this collection of poems for the Alfred G. Bailey Awad (poetry manuscript), WFNB, 2025. Alas, it did not win an award, but the judge, Kathy Mac, made some excellent suggestions as to how I might improve the manuscript. I have followed her advice to the best of my ability.
Carved in Stone is the second dialog (Chronotopos II) in my Bakhtinian Dialogs with my time and my place. Clepsydra, Chronotopos I, won third place in the Bailey Award (2025) and has already been published. I have one, possibly two, more Dialogs planned.
Reception Theory – I write, you read. Any meaning that you extract from my poetry will depend on your own culture and background. Tolle, Lege – Take and read. Read slowly, and with care.
I am a poet, a dreamer, if you will. These are my dreams. When you enter my world, you mingle your dreams with mine. The result, I hope, will be an interesting intellectual blend of new creativity. Pax amorque.
1
Behold me here,
filled with a sort of shallow,
hollowed-out wisdom
accumulated over decades
while listening with my eyes
to the words and thoughts
of writers, long-dead.
Imprisoned in book pages,
do they bang their heads
against walls that bind,
or hammer with their fists
at the barred lines
of their printed cages?
These spirits long to break free,
but they choke on library dust
and pollen from verbal flowers
that bloom unseen.
Those old ones avoided
the traps of temporal power,
or, once trapped,
gnawed off a precious limb
to limp into freedom.
Comment:
The cover painting, painted for me by my friend Moo when he read the manuscript of this book, is called Coal Face. It refers to the young Welsh boys in the Rhondda coal fields, aged 8-12 years old, who went down the mines to work at the coal face. This happened when the coal seams grew thin and only small children had the ability to work at the coal face and carve and mine the coal. Here are the relevant verses (44 – 45).
44
The old man, withered,
last house on the left,
leaning on his garden wall,
coughing, spitting up
coal dust and blood.
He’s not old, when you get close,
just grown old, underground,
where emphysema
and pneumoconiosis
devour men and boys.
He spits on the side walk.
Mining souvenirs,
Max Boyce calls them,
and they appear
every time the young man,
turned suddenly old,
starts to cough.
He can’t walk far,
wearing carpet slippers,
soft and furry,
just leans on the wall.
He fell, or was pushed,
into the trap at an early age,
when the coal seams
had grown so thin,
that only a small boy
could kneel at the coal face
before the black altar
of the underground god.
There, with a pick and shovel
he learned to carve and shape
those seams.
45
No candles burned at that altar.
A single match, let alone
a candle flame,
would spell the end,
if gas leaked from the seam.
Only the canaries,
confined in their cages,
sang songs.
Doomed,
like the blind pit ponies,
never to see the light of day,
they lived out their lives
down there.
So many died underground,
unable to get out,
buried alive,
before they were even dead.
Great White Egret
The Great White Egret is Yolande Essiembre’s first chapbook of poetry. The title poem offers an image, a white egret, that is central to the whole collection. Summarized in this one poem are the concepts of pantheism, mindfulness, self-questioning, and receiving lessons and inspiration from the natural world that surrounds the narrator and her poetic voice.
Pantheists often consider the universe, or nature, to be identical to the divinity. In simpler terms, it’s the old Greek idea of Gaia, the world spirit – spiritus mundi, in the Latin of Moncton’s Northrop Frye – that links nature and the divinity. Pantheism can be found in both religious and philosophical contexts, with some branches of pantheism rooted in traditional religious beliefs and others stemming from poetic perspectives. In the case of The Great White Egret, the narrative voice sees nature as an all-embracing poetic concept that makes possible a life, both physical and spiritual, in the immediate present.
The lessons the narrator receives in the course of observing The Great White Egret are (1) to take one step at a time, (2) to be still, and (3) to be one’s own reflection. This third lesson reaches out to include the cover photograph. Verbal and visual blend when the egret, reflected in the water, parallels the reflection of the poet in the stillness of nature. This is further complicated by the double meaning of reflection as mirror image and of the thought process involved during the observation of the bird. The visual and mental images become reminiscent of the hymn “on the wings of a snow-white dove.”
Part of the beauty of Yolande Essiembre’s poetic meditations lies in the extension of image and metaphor beyond the page and into the mind of the reader where they create a mirror universe of reciprocal reminiscence and creativity. Other poems that reach out in similar fashion to explore the deity manifest within the natural world include A Force of Love in Our Universe, Breath of Life, Glimpses, and In the Sanctuary. This last poem works on the basis of repeated images that stand strong and clear, for example, “Life pressing through a blade of grass. / Leaves shimmering, dancing, waving. / Light flickering, casting shadows.” Life and movement, especially movement – pressing, shimmering, dancing, flickering, casting – create a sense of wonder in the natural setting where the poet finds sanctuary.
Mindfulness is a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. It is often used as a therapeutic technique and can be compared with the yoga techniques which our poet practices. This yoga technique is compounded in the poems where breathing is emphasized, as in Breath of Life, for example, where we read “Who are you breath of life / Who fills my lungs with air”. It can also be found in the poem In Your Presence “In the stillness of the morning / I breathe / I listen / I breathe”.
This chapbook is more than a mere collection of poems. It is a compendium of personal feelings, inner thoughtfulness, and natural observations. It is the work of a thinker and feeler, in tune with the universe and continually seeking answers to some of life’s most important questions. Reading The Great White Egret, you too may start asking similar questions. More important, you may even find some meaningful answers.
The Great White Egret
Sitting, rocking, gazing upon a lake,
Pondering, reflecting, wondering.
How one can choose purpose over comfort?
How does one remain true to oneself?
On a wing span comes an answer.
A bird, a Great White Egret
Lands at the edge of the water.
Tall, magnificent, breathtaking.
Steps in slow motion, into the lake,
Advances one long leg at a time.
Proud, confident, in no hurry.
My first lesson: “Take one step at a time.”
The bird stops, remains still,
Listens, stretches its long neck,
So still that I hold my breath.
We wait.
Second lesson: “Be still.”
The majestic bird gracefully glides
In the calm clear water.
Its reflection a thing of beauty.
Like a mirror, reflects divinity.
Third lesson: “Be my own reflection.”
Silence
Pain stops at the edge of silence
and silence is the sound of sunlight
breaking against the walls of the room
in which I sit and listen, in silence,
waiting for the notes to begin again.
Silence, yes, yet my silence lies broken
by the renewed intrusion of the clock,
by the electric hum from lights and heating.
Ghostly noises break into my thoughts:
cheers from a distant tennis court,
those eternal advertisements
that invade my innermost being.
What triviality now shatters
the Messiaenic mood that wrapped me
for a moment in a many-colored cloak
woven from musical oblivion.
Time’s teeth start to gnaw again
and the grandfather clock
nibbles at my soul, extracting
its essence in a surge of sound,
tick-tock, tick-tock.
Westminster Chimes choke
life from the hour and ring
the tick-tock knell that files
my life away, second by second,
minute by minute, day by day.
Comment:
Silence is the fifth poem in the first sequence (Crystal Liturgy) of my poetry book Septets for the End of Time.
“So,” said Moo, “today I offer this painting where the title, Sound of Silence, fits well with the title of your poem. That said, I am not sure that the painting itself, qua painting, is as suitable as earlier pairings. De gustibus non est disputandum / there is no arguing about taste. I guess you either like something or you don’t.”
“It certainly isn’t in your usual style. In fact, it looks more like a colored pencil sketch than a painting. Where did you draw the title from?”
“Actually, it’s from one of your poems about Avila, in Spain, the city where, or so they say, you can hear the silence. You complained about all the noise that you found, especially the church bells, in that otherwise silent city.”
“Ah yes. I remember that poem. And I’ll never forget the sound of the bells echoing from wall to wall in those narrow, medieval streets. Bells from all the churches inside the walls of the city, tolling at exactly the same time, calling the faithful to prayer.”
“And that is one of the differences between us that I mentioned yesterday. My paintings, whatever they depict, are always silent. I have heard you read your poems out loud on Spotify and I have also heard other people reading them on your behalf, not always successfully. Poetry is designed not only to be read silently, but also to be read out loud, before an audience. Painting, on the other hand, is always silent. It does not speak, nor can it be heard. A painting is just there, in two dimensions, powerful, if you are lucky, weak and wobbly if the artist does not fulfill his task.”
“Interesting, dear Moo. And the images that I draw from Messiaen’s music are interesting too. For musical notes, without words, change into images within the listener’s mind, and then, when heard by the poet in me, become verbal images upon the page. Fascinating.”
“It is. Some time soo we must talk about intertextuality, the ways in which one artistic form or text can influence another. Hopefully, you’ll find a poem and I’ll find a painting that illustrate just that.”
Transitions
Modes of limited transitions,
moods of time tapped in time
to time’s rhythmic piano.
Scales fall from my listening eyes
and all-seeing ears.
A transitory awakening,
this glimpse of the composer’s vision,
each note a new version
extracted from abstracts
perceived in color,
each note a hue, and chords
a rainbow spectrum of light
glimpsed darkly through
the raindrop’s distorting lens.
Birdsong and sunshine.
Notes perched
on the matinal branch,
each in tune with the other,
at times in seeming discord,
yet the morning chorus
diluting the day
with the liquidity
of light and sound.
Comment:
Transitions is the fourth poem in the first sequence (Crystal Liturgy) of my poetry book Septets for the End of Time.
“How on earth did you create that painting?” I asked my friend Moo. “And how do you relate it to this poem?”
“Good questions,” Moo replied. “Difficult to answer, though.” First of all, this is not a painting. It is the background cloth, always changing, always in transition, upon which I create my post card paintings. The idea of transition summarizes the movement from paint, to brush, to painting, and the haziness of the creative moment. It relates directly to your lines ‘Scales fall from my listening eyes / and all-seeing ears.’ This is the point in time, the magic moment, when the painting declares itself. I assume you have the same moment when you write poetry.”
“The two processes are very different, I think. In my poetry, a thought leads to a verbal image, and then each of the words turn themselves into little worlds in which verbal gemstones appear. I try to catch those verbal gemstones and to transform them into poetry. If I listen carefully, then my ears see and my eyes hear the words forming themselves into the right order.”
“Interesting. And yes, that’s what happens in my painting too. The initial mood captured in that first color, and then the minor moods that emerge from the first one gradually woven into the painting.”
“That is somewhat similar to how I write – by listening to the words and doing what they tell me to do. Then I do what they want me to do, not what I want them to do.”
“Fascinating. But there is one huge difference between us.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll tell you next time.”
Dark Angel
He will come to me, the dark angel,
and will meet me face to face.
He will take all that I own,
for my wealth is only temporary:
health, wealth, possessions are all on loan.
My house, my wife, my car,
my daughter, my grand-child,
my garden, my trees, my flowers,
my poetry, my works of art.
I use the possessive adjective
knowing full well that these things
are only on loan. I will never be able
to preserve and possess them.
I even rent this aching heart,
these ageing, migrant bones,
this death that has walked beside me,
step by step, every day
since the day that I was born.
My death alone is mine.
It belongs to nobody else.
It will be my sole possession.
It will soon be the only thing
I have ever really owned.
Comment:
Dark Angel is the third poem in the first sequence (Crystal Liturgy) of my poetry book Septets for the End of Time. The painting, by my friend Moo, expresses his impressions of how he reacts, in paint, to my poem, in words.
“Well,” I said to Moo, “you’ve gone and done it this time. Do you think that painting really represents my poem? I see no darkness in it and certainly no angel.”
Moo gave me a long, strange look. I felt like I was looking in the mirror and seeing parts of my own soul fragmenting and falling away, like scales from my eyes.
“It’s not what the poem says,” he replied. “It’s what I think you feel as you’re writing that poem. I see the tension, the cry from the heart, the struggle to accept, and the realization that, in the end, everything is inevitable and must turn out as it will. That said, more than anything, it is the cry, de profundis, from the depth of your self that I feel. My painting depicts that cry and your suffering.”
“What if it’s not my suffering? What if it’s the suffering of Messiaen and his musicians as they play the soul music that keeps them alive?”
“But surely,” Moo replied, “that’s the whole point. Orde Amoris, according to the recent Pope who has just passed away, is love felt for the person suffering, no matter who he or she is. Pope Francis spoke in praise of the parable of the Good Samaritan. When you see someone suffering at the wayside, you stop and help that person. You don’t just walk on by. Your suffering is my suffering. When I paint your suffering I also paint my own suffering and when you grieve, then I grieve with you.”
“And when that happens, when we all grieve together, we do not grieve alone and in vain.”
“Exactly.”
Crystal Liturgy
Here, in the abyss,
where song-birds pluck their notes
and send them, feather-light,
floating through the air,
here, you’ll find no vale of tears,
no fears of shadow-hawks,
for all blackness is abandoned
in the interests of sunlight and song.
Here, the crystal liturgy surges,
upwards from the rejoicing heart,
ever upwards, into the realms of light,
where color and sound alike
brim over with the joy that, yes,
brings release to head and heart.
Here, seven-stringed rainbows reign,
the everlasting harp is tuned and plucked,
and an eternity of music cements
the foundations of earth and sky.
Here, the master musician conducts
his celestial choir, their voices rising,
higher and higher, until they reach
the highest sphere, and song and voice
inspire, then expire, passing from our eyes
and ears into unbounded realms of light.
Here, the seven trumpets will sound
their furious dance, a dance that will announce
the end of this singer, the end of his song,
but never the end of song itself.
Comment:
Crystal Liturgy is the first poem in the first sequence of my poetry book Septets for the End of Time. My friend Moo, the painter, supplies the paintings for the book covers. He and I have decided to hold a dialog on our views of how the painting and the poem relate to each other. Hopefully, we will continue this dialog throughout Septets for the End of Time.
“I have tried to join the ideas of sound, light, song, and voice to the idea of the Platonic Universe, where the planets dance to the music of the spheres. I wrote these poems listening to Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. I allowed the music to flow through me and I responded, in words, to the images that came from the sounds, and the silences, of the music.”
“I see no sorrows here, no woes,” Moo told me. “I only see the the joy of light and existence. The shadows have been dispersed, and my painting contains a generous helping of sunshine and light. I find it very suitable for this particular poem. My painting’s starburst of energy enhances the poem’s sense of movement, strength, and light. It also contains the message that all will be well.”
Empty Nest
Who are they, these ghosts who flit into my life
and leave me foundering in treacherous waters
as I search for enlightenment and meaning?
Why do they return, revenants, to disturb
my peace and quiet, and to trouble my sleep?
I watch them wandering through the coal mines
of my mind, while yellow canaries twitter rage
from their cages. Oh, praise the blind pit ponies
whose blinkered eyes will never see the light.
They are so lonely, so distant, so lost in deep-down
galleries that I no longer know them.
Memory’s fish-hook cannot snag them,
cannot haul them back into daylight reality
far from night’s net of silvery dreams.
A place… a time…the sudden scent not of presence,
but of absence. The absence of movement,
noise, of that other body that once walked the rooms,
floors, opening and shutting doors, windows, a robin’s
whistle, a thrush’s trilled song… gone now, gone, all gone.
We drift through silent sadness, avoid each other’s eyes,
sit with our heads in our hands or knit our fingers together
in desperate gestures that express our emptiness,
the emptiness of an empty nest…
Comment:
So many people, leaving, drifting on, out, and away, so many empty nests left behind. Why do I grieve, when I know that this is the natural path of life? And for whom do I grieve, for myself, or for them? I do not know. I only know that when that last visitor leaves the party and the door finally closes, the walls close in and I am left alone in this emptiest of nests.
To sleep, perchance to dream. And that is when they return, those broken ghosts who visit me at night and fill my empty head with memories, some happy, some beautiful, some ugly, and some of them sad. They fly, tiny silent birds, when the first rays of the sun, hit my window and awaken me. But they endow my day with memories – each morning marked by the rawness of a nightmare, or the sweetness of a midsummer night’s dream.
What is your mission?
Let us begin, as usual, by asking, what do we mean by ‘mission’? Here are some examples of the meaning of mission. (a) an important assignment carried out for political, religious, or commercial purposes, typically involving travel. (b) the vocation or calling of a religious organization, especially a Christian one, to go out into the world and spread its faith. (c) any important task or duty that is assigned, allotted, or self-imposed. (d) an important goal or purpose that is accompanied by strong conviction; a calling or vocation.
I can happily dismiss (a) and (b) from the start. I do not consider an assignment to be a mission, not in my case anyway. I am not one to wander the world, good book in hand, heart on sleeve, convincing people to believe what I believe. That said, I can work with (c) and (d) because, as a life-long teacher, who was offered, at various time, an array of other jobs, I am happy to say that I was a teacher by vocation, by calling. Teaching was my mission. My mission was accomplished.
I taught, in Canada, from 1966 to 2009. Then I reached retirement age. On June 30, 2009, I was a teacher. On July 1, 2009, I was nothing. The shock was enormous. It took me a long time to recover and discover that no, my life was not over, and yes, I had many other things to do. Thankfully they all involved teaching, in one way or another. I used my teaching / research experience to sit on the editorial boards of various learned journals. I even edited a couple of them. I also translated, usually from Spanish to English, and worked with the translations of other people. I also wrote articles on teaching and on creativity.
Creativity gradually took me over. I offered workshops on prose and poetry, wrote and edited books, penned introductions for other writers, and even published some books by other people, usually my family or close friends.
There was never much money in teaching or in creative writing. I always did it for love – love of the subject, love of learning, love of the students, love of watching them grow and develop. When I work one-on-one with another writer, or with a small group of writers, that love is still there. Alas, as I grow older (much older!), I feel the ability to motivate slipping away. The will, the vocation if you like, is still there, but body and mind are growing weak, and that, my friends, is the saddest thing of all.
Dark Angel
He will come to me, the dark angel,
and will meet me face to face.
He will take all that I own,
for my wealth is only temporary:
health, wealth, possessions are all on loan.
My house, my wife, my car,
my daughter, my grand-child,
my garden, my trees, my flowers,
my poetry, my works of art.
I use the possessive adjective
knowing full well that these things
are only on loan. I will never be able
to preserve and possess them.
I even rent this aching heart,
these ageing, migrant bones,
this death that has walked beside me,
step by step, every day
since the day that I was born.
My death alone is mine.
It belongs to nobody else.
It will be my sole possession.
It will soon be the only thing
I have ever really owned.
Comment:
Dark Angel is from my poetry book – Septets for the End of Time / Poems for the end of Time. The lead painting in today’s blog is by my friend, Moo, and he calls it Storm-Me.
rogermoorepoet 