ELECTRIC CANDLELIGHT

flickering 
on the coffee table
reminds me

TV dinners
frozen enchiladas
in crimped foil boxes
fifty years ago

pre-dating electric candles,
cable and streaming, 
iPhones and laptops,

pre-dating towers and floppy discs 
served on thin metal folding tables 
watching Bonanza and Mork and Mindy.

All dead now
except me, I’m not dead
I wonder if the enchiladas 
tasted as good as I remember.

Anthony Watkins, publisher, poet, painter, and educator, lives in rural north Florida with his wife, teenager, and his 70-lb. pitbull lapdog. He writes about the people and places around him and everyday life.  For the past decade he has been a community teaching assistant at Penn’s ModPo, and is also touring rural libraries to discuss poetry, both as subject matter, as well as how it impacts our daily lives. Anthony began publishing Scene, Arts of the Treasure Coast in 1995, continued with Abundance, a Harvest of Life, Literature & the Arts. Today he publishes Better Than Starbucks.