The Lighthouse

The Lighthouse

He perches on the broad

promontory,

broods over the hulking jagged

black masses that wait, thirsty, for the blood

of any over-curious traveler.

He watches with a long-glassy orb,

dull but for the kindled life, relic of days slipped by,

glinting within when the sky pours forth fire.

He glowers over the muddy brawling waves,

stark and deserted, like

one of those ancient deities, sitting moldering on a shelf somewhere,

in someone's dusty library.

Zeus, maybe—but his thunderbolts lie rusty and unused,

and he hunches on his mount of slick, weather-beaten

stone, mulling over tumultuous pasts.

Wondering what became of his adorers,

the ones he steered to safety with resonating roar

echoing in its hearer's heart-cavity;

Wondering why, when Olympus trembled under him,

he knew brokenness.

Gods aren't supposed to break.

Wondering why all drifted away—

but for his neighbor, and he didn't matter.

Forever rolling, wrestling, spewing up encrusting,

bitter libations

that stuck in hard places, roughened the skin

and reeked of fish—

All of any worth gone like a hart into trees.

The incessant laugh and growl of the neighbor's heirs

Echoing, spectrally

insignificant, about deaf ears.

Harsh, choking birds tearing at his laurel crown,

a minor annoyance, only.

He keeps his head up firm and proud,

and muses on the past.