Holy Presences

by Mark Belair

A gentle spoon, its work
done, rests in a plain white

bowl, slim handle sloping
off the bowl’s ceramic lip,

a little dab of milk in the
spoon basin, a shallow pool,

discolored by cereal crumbs,
still in the well of the bowl

which sits beside a small, tapered glass
speckled with orange juice pulp, a plash

of juice left behind, a trace of coffee
shadowing my hairline-cracked cup—

the chalice of this humble
morning sacrament.

*

Why
are these three candles—

soft, squat pillars, fern green,
resting on frosted-glass squares

whose edges curl up—
so present to me?

Perhaps
from the childhood memory

of dark Romanesque churches
and their mysterious, miracle-working votive candles.

Or perhaps
because these three candles—

green as growth, calmly secular,
adult—promise neither more

(no special indulgences, no eternal
mercy for the living and the dead)

nor less than what they can provide:
quiet light to live by.