Easter Candles

by Kelly Norah Drukker

Park Extension, Montreal, 2022

We meet in the middle

of the street, stamping cold.

From the church steps, floodlights glow.

The voice of the cantor echoes

against the pavement, sings

from the raw belly of sorrow.

The rising notes dip

as they fall, arrowing

toward their hidden mark.

Under night clouds, the sky

is a thin skin, stretched grey.

Beneath it, others shelter

in basements, factories. Bombs,

exhumed from memory’s vault

explode, real as day.

The church doors open,

a seam, spilling light.

Mothers walk, stately, gripping candles;

children dart beyond reach,

dodge fathers who smoke, laugh,

as fireworks streak the air.

A young woman approaches,

Christos Anesti

dips her flame to our cups

and we glow,

a chorus of firelight, glimmering

lives trailing home, guarding the flame

with tinfoil and lanterns.

We weave through streets

grandmothers blessed, long ago

on their midnight walks—

keepers of the hearth, they knew

how a light could be snuffed

by a careless hand.

In this stone-grey season, we raise

our candle tips, etch a cross

above our door, please bless this place—

if but a wisp of smoke

could cross the ocean,

mark each doorway safe.