Amid ruins, a tiny ember reminds us that hope is never extinguished.
Introduction
Sometimes loss arrives not as punishment, but as a clearing - a way for something truer to take root. The Pilot Light is a poem based on the movie Going My Way, and is about that moment when what we’ve built, believed in, or tended for years is suddenly gone, and yet, somehow, a small warmth remains. It’s about realizing that faith - in people, in kindness, in quiet endurance - can survive the fire. The poem moves from despair to renewal, following one man’s discovery that the real church is not made of walls, but of hearts still willing to hope.
I. The Ashes of Forty-Five Years
The steeple fell first, a broken finger pointing nowhere.
Ashes on my collar - the smell of failure, holy and human.
Forty-five winters of prayer gone
in an hour’s greedy blaze; the rafters folded
like ribs surrendering breath.
The scent of loss was almost kind…
a mercy I couldn’t trust.
I asked if this was judgment or release,
but only the hiss of water on stone replied,
a psalm turned backward.
II. The Young Man’s Logic
He stood beside me, the young one, with his easy smile,
his hands unmarked, mine dark with memory.
He spoke of pilot lights, of new growth from bare ground -
business talk, I thought, not grace.
Then silence…then the shift of wind.
His words struck flint on the years I’d buried,
a spark in the rubble, stubborn as belief.
And for the first time, I saw the fire
not as ending, but as clearing.
III. The Gift of Community and “Molly’s Boy”
The bank man’s hand - unexpectedly soft, uncounting.
The boys, their coats new, sang of a star
not fixed in heaven but in their own throats.
And then her name arrived - my mother’s -
inked across an ocean, steady as prayer.
O’Malley said nothing, only smiled that
half-smile of his, as if he’d lit a candle somewhere
and left the door ajar.
My eyes blurred with the smoke of gratitude,
and for once, I let them.
IV. The Meeting
She stood in the doorway … smaller,
her hands folded, remembered flowers.
For a heartbeat I was twelve again,
her voice soft as home bread breaking.
The years between us fell away like dust.
She touched my cheek, left ash on her thumb.
We laughed, both of us, at the mistake -
and the laugh itself became a blessing.
V. Renewal
The ashes are cool now - fertile ground.
The true church breathes in gathered voices,
not in brick or gilded saints.
My hands, once clenched in fear,
open to the embered air.
The pilot light is burning, unseen but sure …
enough to find the next hymn by.
GBS
1993
Related poem: Where the Bells Wait to Speak
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