Like candles

It wasn’t even close to my birthday.

Yet the tips of the bare branches on the treetops

were burning like candles.

Then, as the earth turned beneath my feet,

without even a single breath,

those flames were extinguished.

I walked on along the street

towards where the moon would be rising,

the air biting my nose,

the sounds of my footsteps in my ears.

The sky was so deep and so clear

as far out as my eyes could see.

I walked on into the night

towards where Orion the Hunter would be rising 

to take his lonely place in the sky,

turning as the earth turned

through the long, cold winter.

At dusk, not even a short hour ago,

I had watched a hawk

flying near the tops of the tree branches.

At least the hawk

only killed for survival.

And yet, as I walked,

tonight all was calm

and the moon was so bright

and I wondered as I watched

why all of this was still somehow not enough.

‘So this is Christmas,’ Lennon sang

ages and ages ago -

and again and again on my digital device.

But his words remained only a lyric:

War was not over.

I bowed my head.

And then, at last, I turned towards home.

I, at least, would be warm,

sitting down with my wife for my supper soon.

Comfort and not always joy.

And still tomorrow I will be glad to see the sun rising

and to be breathing in the wind,

watching the bare branches reaching ever upwards.

But in the darkness of the night

I asked the glittering stars up above so high,

Why do we humans extinguish

the beauty that we did not create?