Original Version: The Candle Poem by William F Dougherty

The unction cools; the saving taper glows,
Dripping strands of sacramental brede.
The priest, his missal splayed like wings, bestows
The rite. The sliding bedside curtains cede
Asylum while his voice intones each verse.
I tap my staples, a compulsive need
Like the distancing drugs. The night-shift nurse
Doubles her chin and drones her fisted beads.

My blood seems churned with fiction; I forget
The primal scheme, the long-fragmented creed.
I weigh apostasy and conscious debt,
And cannot tell the lily from the weed.
The candle gutters, swallows its small fame:
A ghost of smoke absorbs my incensed name.


[Pub.in The Raintown Review, Vol.5, Issue 2, pg.10.]