poem

 Lighthouse

Now I’m a lighthouse

With a burned out lamp

Watching ship after ship

Crash against my crags.

I have become kitsch

Intractably useless 

A prop for family vacation pics.

We’re only a few weeks from 

The first winter freeze 

When northern seas 

Can’t be sailed  

But that’s no solace.

I was meant to shine

So someone could find

The way to safe harbors.

No one has ever seen

My vast and wild interior

An undiscovered country

Of dark forests and fertile plains

Unfurling to distant mountains

Now no one will.

I face the water

With all that at my back.

Even I have failed

To fully explore my own lands 

11/5/23