The Lighthouse Keeper's Inventory

He counts the things the tide forgot to take: a bottle green as envy, a gull's loose feather, the rind of moon still floating in the cistern.

Each night the lamp unrolls its yellow road across the water, and no one walks it. Still he sweeps the glass, still trims the wick, believing light is a kind of letter sent to whoever the dark has misplaced.

In the logbook he writes only weather— fog like wet wool, the wind's small arguments— never the ache that loiters in his chest like a ship that will not finish sinking.

Morning hauls its nets of silver up. He drinks his tea and watches the horizon practice its one trick: arriving, arriving, holding nothing, and arriving still.