Baron Wormser: Once

I was a candle

Carried upstairs downstairs

One room to another

A scholar making modest inroads

Interrogating shadows

Ardent lucid

But wavering shamefully in any draft

And untrustworthy

                              firing a stray sleeve

Or curtain

My communicable sincerity a disaster




Lost and lost

                      disappearing

A stub a memory

And then seemingly nothing but liable

To be reborn

                     my puddled dissolution

Remelted and molded

One of the incarnated

Who supplied a modest sign

To the doubters

One who knew there was no end

To light however faint

Copyright 2021 Baron Wormser.

Baron Wormser founded the Conference on Poetry and Teaching. Wormser’s forthcoming book is titled The History Hotel (CavanKerry Press, Spring 2023).