Sitting in the dark

Sitting in the dark

Save for a candle,

Watching it splutter.

Believing it to be a connection

To faded romance

Hard times

When women polished silver

And cleaned fire grates

For the mine owner

Before the Coal Board

And politics

Took an axe to the old ways.

When sons were born

To die on muddy fields

Cutpurse thieves

Were shipped abroad

To find themselves

In another country

Half a world away.

When letters took weeks

On a slow boat

Before they were read,

Poured over

Every word written

A message of love and hope

A right of passage.

Blue smoke curling

Up into the corners

Where the ceiling is darkest

The shadows deepest.

At the edge of a circle

When bright flame

Is an escape

For lost imaginings.

The sculpting of molten wax

An illumination

For romantic dreams

And melancholia

Is left to despair

Of its release.