Week 2 of Advent for Everyone explores peace and Finding Stillness. Today’s verse haibun meditates on two Advent candles burning on the table—hope joined by peace. The flames do not rush, do not check the time, do not flinch at the world’s urgency. In their slow burning, a moment of stillness arrives.
🎧 Hear the poem aloud or read at your own pace—whichever speaks to you today.
Two Flames
By Scott Tilley
The first candle has been burning for a week now.
Its wax pools unevenly, leaning slightly
toward the window where morning light arrives.
Today I light the second. The match hisses,
catches, transfers its small fire
to the waiting wick. Two flames now.
I sit with coffee cooling in my hands
and watch them burn. They do not rush.
They do not check the time.
Outside, a car door slams. Someone
is already late for somewhere.
The flames do not flinch.
I have been that person, racing
from one urgency to the next,
mistaking speed for purpose.
The candles offer nothing
but their burning. No advice,
no wisdom, no instructions.
Just light. Just warmth.
Just the slow becoming
of wax into air.
I breathe. The flames breathe.
For this one moment, nothing
needs to happen next.
~ ~ ~
cinnamon and wax—
two flames nod to each other
like old friends talking🪞 Poet’s Note
I have been watching the Advent wreath on our table each morning this week. The first candle, lit last Sunday for hope, has developed character—its wax pooling in one direction, its flame now familiar. When I lit the second candle for peace, something changed in the room. Two lights instead of one. The darkness pushed back a little further.
The haiku arrived while I was sitting with my coffee, noticing how the flames seemed to move toward each other. Candles in proximity do this, pulled by the small currents of warm air they create. It looked like conversation. It looked like friendship. It looked like what peace might feel like if peace had a body.
✍️ Poetry Matters from Spirituality Today