Lighthouses

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Lighthouses
By Robert James Berry

The peat bricks and
cleft wood
burn lavender

Tall
Shadows permeate the solitude

I continue to stoke the small blaze
Lever the firetongs
coax reticent wood
to crackle

A knot spits like a shooting star
extinguishes at my ankles

Out of the window
Over the water
are the rain-stained lights
of another country

The unaltering eye of the lighthouse

crabbed to land's end

In the condensation
With my index finger
I write your name

Fascinated
as the tall letters and arrowed heart drip

When the fire grows flames
The pane clouds
and my other country is folded away
under a wrapper of fog

Your companionable blink put out
I walk to my seat
and sit with winter