What Comes After Destruction

Every couple of years, I take myself to a hotel or some other place for a self-directed silent retreat at the end of the year. Today’s draft started in the middle of my last retreat, when I was starting to get fed up with sitting still and contemplating doubt.

I scrape wet leaves from the step

with the edge of my clean white shoe

while rain soaks deeper into Winter-dark ground.

The sky is a gray that suggests the end of color.

I am blurred on my walk through heavy rain.

It is the moment to curl around a single thin flame

meditate my mind into a candle wick —

born for immolation —

wait in the fragrance of molten wax

for light and heat to pass through me

so I may know what comes after destruction.