Written for David’s Wea’ve Written Weekly
where our PoW Dennis asks us to write a
poem in which we are a lighthouse.
Thanks for the prompt, Dennis & David!
I have stood here since before the word for standing.
I know every reef by its hunger, every current by its spite.
My light makes a door in the dark – come through, come through –
and the ships that pass me pass safely into morning.
See how they trust me: the way they hold their course
as if I were the fixed point the whole sea turns on.
I count them in. I count them out, and in again.
Not one has been lost on a night I was watching.
The rock below me is black and always wet.
The gulls here do not sing; they argue with the wind.
But I burn. I turn. I insist on myself
against the dark, which has no such conviction.
What I guard, I cannot name …. only feel
as a pressure in the glass, a heat in the lens.
Some nights the fog erases everything but me
and I think: this is closest to the truth of things.
A light that believes in itself
outshines the darkness. It is dignified.
I am still here. I am still burning.
Whether anything is saved is not my question.
NAR©2026
#W3
This is “Conquistador” by Procol Harum
Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, except where otherwise indicated. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.
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