A petromax lamp
For want of an immediate provocation for an intersecting diary note , my thoughts randomly hit an obscure memory of a petromax lamp that used to fascinate me when I was a kid, a romantic light that extended long shadows on silent streets. I do not see any petromax lamps in these days of electric lights but there has got to be somewhere a petromax light still waving in the breeze, on the door-frame: A petromax lamp A lamp burned in white light, inside a soft rib cage
Feeling like an exhausted star from the Milky Way.
Its light curdled like white milk on the mud walls.
The shadows of the rain moths swarming around it
Were a massive mess of unreal figures on the wall,
As the dots together became squares and polygons
In the way they whirred around the petromax light.
As the wind stirred in the leaves, the lamp danced
Gently on the door frame, where it is hung by a nail
Its shadow quickly responded on the wall in dance
With the entire halo of rain-moths around its head.
