Inventory of a Lighthouse

The keeper counts what the night returned: a gull's wishbone, a length of rope gone green, the salt that settles like a quiet creed on every windowsill he forgets to wipe.

He has learned the grammar of the beam— how it asks the dark a question, sweeps, asks again, expecting no reply, only the patient stutter of the buoy.

Ships pass the way years pass, all hull and hurry, their captains certain of the shore. He envies nothing. He has the long arithmetic of waves, the moon's slow coin.

Some mornings the fog forgets to lift and the world shrinks to the rail beneath his hands, the foghorn's grief, the kettle's small applause— proof enough that something still keeps watch.

When he dies the light will not. It will keep its appointment with the rocks, keep spelling its one bright syllable to whatever listens, or does not, or drowns.