You pour the tallow, dip the wick
and watch the candle cool.
And it's same way every day
all down the years.
You grow benighted by the dark
pursuit of process,
until that inattentive instant
when an insect somehow falls
into a candle mold and late at
night
a flame you always thought you
knew
flares briefly cochineal.
Illumination comes from
accidents you welcome.
Curious, you open up,
and reds and happenstance rush in.
Hungry for color you crawl the
woods
and soon your workshop walls dance
indigo and aubergine and marigold.
Sometimes there's just soot and
stink.
No matter: The old gods are dead.
You're asked about perfection
and you laugh. As if arrival ever
is,
as if there ever is a golden age
of anything,
as if there's ever anything
but making and remaking
light by light we've made.