The Lighthouse Keeper's Inventory

I count what salt has not yet taken: the brass key, the chipped enamel cup, a photograph whose face has gone to fog. The sea outside keeps its own ledger, crossing names off in slow, gray strokes.

Each night the lamp turns its blind eye across the water like a patient question. Boats answer or do not answer. I have learned the difference between silence and the silence that means drowning.

The gulls argue over nothing on the rocks. I trade them yesterday's bread for their racket, their bickering proof that something still wants. My wife's voice, when I try to summon it, arrives only as the kettle's first low note.

In the logbook I write: wind southwest, fair. I do not write: the dog has stopped waiting at the door. I do not write the year. The light goes around. The light goes around. The cliff holds me up like an old promise.