Better to light a candle, they say,

and so we do.

Light them and send them out

into the world.

But not until we’ve checked their homework,

until they’ve brushed their teeth.

Until we’ve taught them how to cross the street,

or walked them, till they know.

Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, they say

But when your candle is put out

oh, the darkness.

We trip, we fall, the landscape that we knew

irretrievably altered and strange.

We curse with pain, and then we cry –

we reach for each other,

and in doing so,

light our candles again.