Keep the windows clean—
keep the lamp lit.
How many metaphors have been spawned
by this ordinary job: carrying kerosene
or stove-warmed lard
up, up, and again up
into the lantern-room.
Painting and perpetually painting
the walls, the floors. Adjusting
vents, turning brass knobs—
and the records, always
the keeping of records.
The amount and usage of supplies.
What has broken and needs repair.
The weather. The wind. The waves.
The tiny boat drifting through March fog,
father and son hunched and still
over the oars, coated in ice,
hunched and forever still,
gray forms fading back into the gray.
If there is a metaphor, there it is:
the promise that something will hold us
even as we disappear into the fog—
after washing the windows clean
and lighting the lamp,
someone watches
and writes.
Photo Courtesy: Paulius Dragunas, Unsplash
Judge’s Comment:
”The Lighthouse” places first for the success of its extended metaphor of the lighthouse as a lone individual, a body with awareness, working through each day. The literal details are apt and they create a vivid sense of place. This sense is further highlighted in the stanza of the boat adrift in fog, like a painting, with existential suggestiveness. And of course, the meta-poetic final stanza, accenting the act of record-keeping as the work of survival, for both lighthouse keeper and writer.
Poet’s Statement:
Two years ago, I decided I needed an adventure, so I volunteered for a week as a docent with two strangers at the lighthouse on remote Rock Island. And it was wonderful. This poem is based on the sorts of things the lighthouse keepers did as well as what they saw and wrote in their logs. I volunteered again this year and hope to keep on doing it; I would highly recommend it to anyone.