Four Poems

Buried Candles
for Sean Scully

Somewhere, a boy finds himself in the fust
of an empty church, in the stale
respirations of beeswax and smoke,

runs his hand along the thinning length
of an altar candle, steals it,
and seven others beside. Home,

he wraps his haul like fish
in newsprint, buries it in his father’s garden.
When the priest arrives,

to ask if the boy has anything belonging to God,
he listens for the mute echo of bones
igniting the earth. Now, every brushstroke

is an exhumation, an anatomy of fire –
brutal whisper with the invisible
...