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Keeper Of Delusions

Nancy's Notes 🖊️♬

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!

Image by Me & Perplexity

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

W3 Prompt #203: Wea’ve Written Weekly

Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, except where otherwise indicated. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.

35 thoughts on “Keeper Of Delusions”

    1. Thank you, David. The original line was “I see them in, I see them out, and in again” but as I read it, I realized it needed more “certainty”. That’s when I changed the word to “count”. I’m so glad I changed that line and it appealed to you. Thank you, my friend. ♡

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