{"id":10827,"date":"2017-01-02T03:09:24","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T10:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodletters\/?p=10827"},"modified":"2017-01-02T00:09:57","modified_gmt":"2017-01-02T07:09:57","slug":"poem-new-year-candleroom-saint-bartholomews-new-years-eve-heather-sellers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodletters\/2017\/01\/poem-new-year-candleroom-saint-bartholomews-new-years-eve-heather-sellers\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem for the New Year: \u201cIn the Candleroom at Saint Bartholomew\u2019s on New Year\u2019s Eve\u201d By Heather Sellers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Image\"This poem moves me and impresses me with its sense of almost-but-not-quite arriving at connection. Everywhere I turn within the walls of this poem, I come face to face with human need and the world\u2019s shortcomings in meeting that need. Mourning her mother, the speaker attempts throughout the poem to do a simple thing: light a candle. Instead, she finds herself confronted with failure and dampening hope. In the candle\u2019s failure to light and in comparing herself to the other mourner\u2019s open grief, the speaker sees the distance between herself and her mother, some final failure to connect or satisfy. Struggle, longing, and love are three threads tightly woven through stanzas of vivid detail and painful confession. Formally, the linked sounds, repetition, and snatches of rhythm give hints of the familiar, adding to a feeling of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu that is mirrored by the narrative itself. The final stanzas push the walls of the cathedral outward, identifying this one speaker\u2019s pain with a bigger wound shared by us all, and perhaps offering, there, the possibility of solace.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Melissa Reeser Poulin<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIn the Candleroom at Saint Bartholomew\u2019s on New Year\u2019s Eve\u201d by Heather Sellers<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

A long time spent trying, kneeling,
\nto light a votive for my mother
\nfrom a votive for another. Each
\nfire floats on shallow viscous water.
\nWith my stick, I wet wicks, extinguishing
\nprayers instead of sending up mine:
\nI loved you every day, will.<\/em> My stick
\nblackens, does not carry light. Evening
\nbells ring. The church is closing to open
\nlater.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em> All the while an antsy girl clicks
\nher heels hard on the tiles. Her mother,
\non a kneeler under a portrait of Mary,
\nweeps softly into her own arms. Hard
\nto do anything well kneeling
\nexcept wonder.<\/em> Like a girl in a war
\nin a book, I seek some softly-lit
\ncontinuity, poach prayed-for heat,
\nwell-turned grief, long to be near
\none well-known by another.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m in the world, the world
\nmy mother could not enter,
\ndid depart. Touching my finger
\nto a stranger\u2019s flame, I mean to touch
\nmy mother. Amorphous immutable
\ndeath takes beautiful shape in a candle
\nflame in a cathedral. I know nothing closer
\nto love: this attempt to take
\nlight\u2019s purchase, try to apply its
\nbreath to darkness. I\u2019ve nearly drowned
\nthe final light. The mother
\nof the busy girl, the clicker, weeps
\non.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em> What if this is heaven?
\nThis cathedral empty but for us, five
\nmothers: Mary, mine, me, her, hers.
\nWhen the guard says time to go<\/em>
\nI stand and see in every tile
\nflame bright as a fresh rip.<\/p>\n

\"GL<\/a><\/p>\n

Heather Sellers<\/strong> is the author of two volumes of poetry,Drinking Girls and Their Dresses<\/em>(Ahsahta) and\u00a0The Boys I Borrow<\/em> (New Issues). She is at work on a collection of poems on the subject of her father\u2019s\u00a0death. She teaches poetry and nonfiction in the MFA program at the University of South Florida.<\/p>\n

The above image is by Marc Cornelis, used with permission under a Creative Commons license.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This poem moves me and impresses me with its sense of almost-but-not-quite arriving at connection. Everywhere I turn within the walls of this poem, I come face to face with human need and the world\u2019s shortcomings in meeting that need. Mourning her mother, the speaker attempts throughout the poem to do a simple thing: light […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1081,"featured_media":10829,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[363,1457,3822],"tags":[314,66,142,67,3962,678,70,3755,1948,1945,672],"class_list":["post-10827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-contributor","category-personal-reflection","category-poetry-friday","tag-church","tag-death","tag-family","tag-grief","tag-heather-sellers","tag-longing","tag-love","tag-melissa-reeser-poulin","tag-poem","tag-poetry-friday","tag-the-new-year"],"yoast_head":"\nPoem for the New Year: \u201cIn the Candleroom at Saint Bartholomew\u2019s on New Year\u2019s Eve\u201d By Heather Sellers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This poem moves me and impresses me with its sense of almost-but-not-quite arriving at connection. 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