The Lighthouse Keeper's Inventory

He counts the things that stay: the rust on the spiral stair, the salt that has learned the shape of every window, a chipped enamel cup that holds exactly one measure of morning.

The lamp turns above him like a slow vow. Below, the rocks rehearse their old applause. He writes the weather in pencil, erases it with his thumb, writes it again.

Letters arrive bound in twine, news from a country he has begun to mispronounce. His sister's children are tall now, are strangers, are photographs that smell faintly of cedar.

At three the fog comes in like something kneeling. He fills the wick. He hums a tune he cannot place, older than any sailor he has saved, older, perhaps, than the saving.

When dawn unlatches the horizon he stands at the rail and listens — not for ships, not anymore, but for the small bright nothing the gulls make of his name.