Rum

Taking the rum bottle you rinse
out the sweet sugar film and force a red
candle into the void

Each evening we light the wick, replace
it when flame melts into nothingness,
only the wax

remains, the liquid drips hardened
around the neck like the frill
of some long extinct lizard

I nurture the long drops like children
noting the growth and checking
for weeping fragility

What are poems but the flickering
huff and waft of the smoke
when the candle

gutters in the coil that sneaks past
reason and sense, the spaces
where emotion gets in

through the gap of the window frame
and my glass is tilted in the hand,
the liquid is burning amber

and the flame in the eye
is burning amber