Brian Ember - I'm Gonna Marry a Lighthouse Keeper
Channel: Poetry for Cowards
Date: 2022-11-09

I’m Gonna Marry a Lighthouse Keeper 

I build around me a 
perfect sanctuary  
with your love as the  
motivation for every brick I place down 
upon the mortar, 
until the tower is high 
above the trees and hills 
and the Subarus, below, 
become matchbox cars 
I used to drive through  
the dirt my father piled 
as he dug his home’s foundation 
in the wooded Guilford dirt  
forty years ago. 

And as the bricks run out,  
I heat beach sand into glass 
with a giant forge, and mold 
and blow the red liquid tar 
into a lens, from which 
I can gather the gentle light outdoors 
into a critical point of heat  
from which 
I can burn  
the dust and old papers  
collected in the foyer; 

and I can at last be free again 
to tussle with whoever I want  
and charm them 
until I make them want  
me to build again 
with bricks strewn around 
the old ruins 
and in this way 
I am the devil 
and my evil 
is limitless. 
 
(June 22, 2019, rev. October 25, 2022)