Inventory of a Lighthouse Keeper

I keep the count of waves the way some men keep coins, each one spent before I name it, the ledger always wet, the ink dissolving into salt before the page can dry.

The lamp turns. It does not ask who is out there in the dark water, only insists, with its patient one good eye, that something be told the truth about the rocks, the reaching rocks.

Once a gull stayed three days on the rail. I gave it nothing and it gave me nothing back, and that, I think, was friendship — two creatures agreeing not to leave before the weather did.

My hands have learned the shape of every railing, the stair that breathes a half-step short, the door that swells in August. The island wears me like an old coat now, loosely, at the elbows, and warm.

When ships pass they see a star that does not move and steer by my refusal to go dark. They will never know my name. This is the cleanest love I know: to burn for strangers, and ask the sea for nothing.