Candle Watching
Friday, October 17th, 2008
Lit earlier in the day and forgotten in the window light, the flame still dances around in the melted wax pool, casting its shape and rhythm on the wall behind the piano. In that corner, there is nothing to coerce it – no draft or idle wind. All the windows were closed when the night came on early, at 7 o’clock, the autumn suddenly deciding to be noticed.
Along with the fading sun the temperatures dropped, too, and the people who live on this street and the others around it reach up steep chimneys to open the flues and light the first fire of the fall. The entire world outside smells of burning logs, a duller yet more pleasant aroma than the leafpiles the neighborhood children rake up and set on fire in the gutters or in giant drums their fathers brought home from work.
Candlelight pulses on the ceiling and on the window with the shade drawn. The flame is sunk in the glass candle jar beneath an opening about three inches in circumference and still manages to throw a broad shadow at least six feet wide. This is the only fire in the house, not enough heat to warm the room and not inviting enough for the house pets to lay beside it, but it creates an ambiance for the spectator who will kill the show shortly with one short breath.
The orange-colored wax glows beneath the wick, scenting the room with pumpkin. Soon, when the days are closer to Christmas, the scent will turn to red berry or desert pies that have a singed baking smell like an oven from which fresh pastries are pulled.
Turning to one side, the flame burns horizontally for a moment, unexpectedly changing direction and demonstrating its familiarity with life’s nature. Then it rolls to the other side before standing as straight up as a cowlick, proud to be alight. There’s only one living soul awake in the room, but there seems to be more. Children are sleeping upstairs in warm beds and the cats have cleared the room gone off on adventures behind the furniture or dark rooms, but the crowd feeling persists due to the changing shadows from the concealed crowd.
There is an energy behind the burning candle that is impossible to ignore as the hour gets later. Encroaching on tomorrow, buring out today, it gets blown out in gray billow of smoke and the room goes dark and somehow empties out.
