The Linnet's Wings Spring 2015 | Page 89

Spring 2015 Candling the Eggs by Wally Swist It was the candled egg that I remember that Mrs. Dornisch held up to the flame, and its total eclipse the darkness softening the harshness of my father’s wrathful temper when mother would walk me over against the darkness of the cellar of her farmhouse, suffused with the odor of the hens, that there, next door, during the times his rage breached the level of reason. My father who never floated as feathers do in the air. Always feel safe here, she said, and I always did, with her by my side, missed a day at the factory, but who could only speak broken English, was ridiculed at work, her aproned warmth distinguished by the cookies she stuffed into her pockets, her momentary then vent verbal fury at the injustices; while Mrs. Dornisch, a septuagenarian, and myself, aged three, musing uttered in sotto voce, deepening the privacy of our candling the eggs, the condensation on the walls candled the eggs, as two anchorites might have applied gilt to the letters in an illuminated evoking what mother told me in a story about what the catacombs looked like, so that the time manuscript, bound in vellum; and as our breaths steamed in the coolness of the cellar, one I spent in Mrs. Dornisch’s cellar with her became my first spiritual experience, the quiet there so superb that at a time, the eggs would be added to the coiled metal basket, clicking against I recall whenever I had a thought Mrs. Dornisch could hear it. The quiet and the candlelight amid the top of some of the others, as a golden halo flickered in the hallowed darkness. Photo: Bellewstown, Co. Meath 2014 The Linnet's Wings Poetry