The Lighthouse Keeper's Inventory

Three lamps, each wick combed straight as a psalm. A tin of matches, dry as a sermon. The logbook, where weather bruises the margins in inks I've mixed from soot and rain.

The gulls return each April like letters I never opened. They settle on the rail, preen their grievances, then cry the same cry the dead used when they still had throats.

A kettle. A cracked blue cup. A chair that leans toward the window out of habit. The rope I braided the winter Helen left — still strong enough to hold a man, still soft enough to hold his hand.

Tonight the beam swings its slow scripture across the black page of the water. I count what counts: one coast, one keeper, one small fire insisting on its hour against the enormous arithmetic of the dark.