The Lighthouse (Day 62)

 

Hand in hand they walked 

for miles, cellophane heat rippling 

in the middle distance. No shade, 

no shade, and it was hot there 

on the blacktop, where stillness 

settled between the pines growing 

within throwing distance 

of the shoulder. 

Their palms sweated, salt air 

passing from her to him, 

and back again, 

and, always, the lighthouse, 

somewhere off to the right, though

often out of view. His face 

reddened, her nose burnt, and 

they longed for water, and for 

the bicycles they earlier refused, 

as if they had forgotten how to ride. 

Perhaps, if they had practiced 

how to pedal and steer,

how to keep their balance,

they wouldn't have lost their way 

and become separated, 

he at one end of a long, sere road, 

she, all the way out here, at the other, 

neither able to put one foot in front 

of the other, to retrace the miles again.

The lighthouse is no longer 

on her right, but behind her, far 

enough behind that, though she 

sometimes strains to see,

she can barely discern its beacon.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six