The Last Lightkeeper

Prayers scratched in stone

etched by broken bones.

Ruined homes 'neath shallow loam

to build another throne.

Heaving, heavy sigh

radiance departed from their eyes.

Tender souls calcified

beneath a mourning sky.

The last lightkeeper calls,

drifting softly through the halls

where so many others used to answer.

Gone to what lies after.

Calloused feet ponder quiet streets

through furrows stamped into concrete.

Gnarled cane laced in ivy fingers,

brandishing a bobbing orb on a ring.

Humming with an amber, glowing sheen

leaving behind a light that lingers.

Mist-slickened roads he'd navigate,

'til confronted by a rusting gate.

Beyond, the stones still call his name.

Silenced by the enduring flame.

Jagged lines of polished granite

final stop on an evanescent planet.

Speckled in bright, vernal blooms.

Draped in a hazy veil of gloom.

The fog engulfed him like a cloak

curling around the light like smoke.

Frostbite nipped his aged skin

though Spring had long since raised her head.

She seemed unwilling to observe the dead

sickened by their ancient sins.

He cared not for such isolation -

we all deserved light's preservation.

So the lightkeeper walked, row by row.

By his cane, they knew the glow

of the Sun in all its cleansing grace.

Freedom from the shadows they faced.

And when he reached the final grave

the keeper dug in the earth his stave.

Offering a silent prayer - may these souls persist -

before joining his friends within the mists.

Author's Note

I started this a while ago, when I woke up with a single line burned into my waking mind. Today I scribbled out the rest of it after class, about half of it in a quick blur of ink and another half that took some careful navigation.

I'm still trying to mix it up, breathe some life into my work rather than drain it out with endless repetition. The result is... a murky success. I like it, I don't love it. I almost never love it, so I'll take it.

Reviews

[Julie McCarthy (juliesp..]

oooh i love this so much, thanks for entry into my gobsmack me competition, sorry its being judged so late today and thanks for being so understanding, good luck

[Nolo Segundo]

I hope the visitors to this site realize this is 'professional' stuff, of a quality approaching those 'set-in-stone' poems we all read in school-- and like the truly worthwhile in any art form, it borders on the transcendent.

[Sazaku]

Man, I'm not really sure how to respond to this. As much as I would love that to be true someday, there's just no way I can see that in my work as it appears today. I'm sure the masters never saw themselves in that light either (which makes me sound WAY more conceited than I mean it to) but I still see myself as a novice in a craft more than 4000 years old in some form or another.

If that's the way history chooses to show me one day, then I'd be unequivocally blessed. Until then, I'm just glad to hear the generous words of readers like yourself. Thanks for the review.

[Jacob Mahurien]

I like the story it tells, interesting concept -especially for a poem-, and great rhyming schemes. Reminds me a bit of Tennyson, or Noyes.

The last line of stanza three, would 'lingers,' be a better word?

[Sazaku]

Why, yes it would! Thank you for the observation, always helps to have another pair of eyes on something. Consider it changed.

I've found quite a love for telling micro stories through poetry, it seems to keep coming back every time I don't have a concrete theme in mind beforehand. Though I fear your appellations are well beyond my current abilities, I do appreciate the kind words.

Thank you for the review.

[Jacob Mahurien]

Neither Tennyson or Noyes started as masters, either. We grow as writers, as did they.

[Sazaku]

A fair point. Sorry if I came off overly-dismissive, it's still hard for me to think of my poetry as anything but a learning process. A literary sketchbook, I suppose.

[Jacob Mahurien]

Oh no, you didn't at all. You came off as modest.