The Retirement Of The Lighthouse Keeper by Phil Wood

The Retirement Of The Lighthouse Keeper

I could do without the light.
The bottled shadows pour
another slow glass, though
they cannot block that eye –
it blinks and blinks again,
both lamp and lens conspire
to see the sea through crusts
of salt; if light should slow
in whiskey’s blur of time –
but it beams across the zest
of spray, that grinning bay
with granite cliffs, and wakes
the ghosts in wrecks. I hear
the prayers shiver from voices.
I hear the drowning clock.
I could do without that light.

by Phil Wood

Editor’s Note: The first and last lines of this poem neatly box into comprehension a great, smashing pile of unruly, oceanic emotions.