Featured in New Lyre Winter 2023
Dangerous to touch, yet tempting me to step into a world of memories. And in a darkened room, when my eyes accustom to its halo of light, It takes me places I know,
and places I don’t. The spinning wheel of my imagination gives me a landscape of imagined trees, a mystery of roses and the shadows of a vulnerable child. Though there is more than one child, as there is more than one childhood.
Age has given me a choice to push aside the dark interiors of my mind. There are moments trapped in the flame that exist to taunt me, black horizons painted on a nursery wall.
Yes, the candlelight has its own soul, not related to mine. And there are no destinations left in its flame, only a confusion of light and dark. But roses still grow secretly below the trees, buried underground, in a place only I can see.
Rowland Hughes is a Welsh writer and poet. He was born, and lived until his late teens, in the Rhondda Valley, from where he still draws most of his inspiration. He worked as a Master Decorator and studied trades in the construction industry. He later became a Local Authority Assistant Surveyor. Due to ill health, he retired in 1997. In 1998, he joined a Cardiff University Creative Writing Group. He loves to observe people, places and nature, writing in bustling cafés and the confines of his writing shed.
The subject almost begs to have a poem written about it, and what a fine one Hughes has given us. I would sum up the poem as "evocative" -- much like the elusive flickering of the candle-flame itself. The interplay of the "roses" (quite unexpected) and "shadows" images and their union in the final images presents a wonderful thesis-antithesis-synthesis structure unifying the work.
I love this poem so much. It’s extremely profound and thought-provoking. I especially love these lines:
There are moments trapped in the flame
that exist to taunt me, black horizons painted on a nursery wall.
In the words of Stewart Burke, utterly brilliant!
- Shannon
"Age has given me a choice to push aside the dark interiors of my mind." Brilliant. Utterly brilliant. I needed that, Rowland.
There are some wonderful lines in this poem, and I just love a wonderful line, such as "the candlelight has its own soul, not really related to mine." That one really stopped me in my tracks and made me think about it. Fine work, Rowland.
Another wonderful poem from one of my favourite poets! I always look forward to a fresh offering from our Welsh master. If ever there was a poet whose gift is almost purely instinctive it is Rowland. The rest of us have to struggle to get where he already reigns supreme.