Today’s prompt, which comes from Holly Lyn Walrath, is pretty simple. As she explains it here:
“Go to a book you love. Find a short line that strikes you. Make that line the title of your poem. Write a poem inspired by the line. Then, after you’ve finished, change the title completely.”
Chosen line: “au milieu d’un amas de rochers sombres, un illuminé vit au fond d’une cellule étroite taillée dans le roc.” (From “l’Illuminé”, in “L’Ombre Chaude de l’Islam” by Isabelle Eberhardt.)
Of a Cold Evening
(Title changed to “Dust“)
The crimson wax
candle melts without
a whisper, next to a gift,
a game called Mar-Lah-Klem,
you cannot play
alone
in lockdown.
Nonetheless, build
a fire in the fire-place, crumple
Life & Arts pages, between their crushed images,their
wrinkled, doomed-to-remain unread
writings,
place a bunch of
bone-dry, sun-percolated,
ready-to-burst pine cones, lean
three large logs of beech
toward each other, oblique
against the soot-black back,
have fingertips strike a match,
watch flames shoot up.
Soon they’ll sound like folds
of silk shifting,
flickering, their sheen
loosely hugs a moving thigh,
wavers along a gentle arm’s gesture,
slides down a lowered wrist,
crackles,
alive.
The hermit,
in the chosen darkness
of his grey stone cave,
patient, oblivious
to the glint,
the hum of the world,
listens beyond solitude,
a glow
within.

The fifth stanza is so sensuous with the silk. Nice!
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