21 April 2018

Only a ghostly outline,
carved on the air,
was the lighthouse
in the fog after dawn,
the lighthouse that stood
a look of abandonment,
its milky eye growing
a cataract.  They rowed
through layers of grey.
It was a world of shades,
as though flesh had given way
to the world beyond,
where the dead sing of abandonment.
Hence, the look of the lighthouse?
Shades came curious up to the boat,
looking it at ones they once were like,
the living, working the oars
through the clam-juice colored water.
Dawn had not burned clear the fog.
The lighthouse stood blind.
The boat rowed close,
curved east to the open
sea scraping the rock
ledge, from which the lighthouse tried
to warn a world that could not see it.

Philip Kuepper
(13 March 2018)