Candlemas

I was once
(and this once wouldn’t
be twice, at least
not in the nice repast
where once resides)
notionally devoted.

I was inclined
to get inside the not
sideways but some-side
seeking (which side
it was, wasn’t
apparent from the outside)
prayers sighed out by
robed supplicants
going through
the notions
proscribed to them by
their owning scribe.

They also recited
(in the time between
those sighs, and the once-
a-day tithes-
paying their souls
owed) their devotionals
to a once-
great power
inflamed by its votive’s
waxy decline.

And I didn’t die
(not notionally,
not yet) in that devotion’s
snuffing, but I was
reborn when I didn’t
stay there to try, to make
sense of the heat
or where it goes
when it lifts
away from white wool
dyed black by
an intimacy with gray
curls borne off at
a wick’s dying.