To light sundry candles, 
to place them on the cold stove
as cinnamon and pine fill the kitchen. 

To wear headlamps in the halls. 
To see the neighbors’ windows glow 
and flicker. Each porch gone black. 

To gather extra blankets, batteries, 
books read by flashlight. To surrender
to this imposed pause. 

To remember an element so often 
eschewed, its mystery and beauty, 
velvet resistance to constant doing. 

To return to the body, fall asleep early, 
deeply. To recall how we began: 
in the dark of our mothers—tiny fires, 

pinpricks of heat in the womb of night.