Lighthouse Mother

The Fresnel Third Order lens turnsin a display case taller than I am,a 60-watt bulb lighting the museum room.Long before, through the same glass,a wick lit up 20 miles of night sky.

Only 17 percent of light lost out of top and bottom,this very efficient sourceburned whale blubber, rapeseed oil, kerosene–

not a destroying fireunless you’re the whale,but one that saved ships that didn’t wreck,their stories on the other side of the lens’s windowed wall.Through a white-painted framed doorway,they are still floating on a touch screen my toddlers pressand pinch to see their damage on the lake’s floor.

And in the turning lens the prismslight the room almost into rainbowsat the soft edges of the glass segments,and the middle, largest circles show the shorelinegrow and wane with the split between grey sea and blue skyblowing larger, disappearing into a glimpse of the door’s latch,before the flame-like incandescent lightshines bright, alone, in the circle’s frame,coming and going, and always it is turning.

And always my mother in the middle of the daybusy, calling, getting shit done, smiling,always at night waning into wine and her slow wordsalways in the morning shuffling out of stupor.Light from her phone the only light, her fingers sliding,clicking, swiping letters into placessomeone or a computer had already foreseen.

I keep sailing home to her.

The lighthouse still shines for safety,LED light locked above in a tower not for museum guests,and my mother still wakes and talks and shuffles.When I count her hours between piss-interrupted sleep and slow steps,79 percent has always been lost out top and bottom.

Outside the leaves say sh sh sh sh.They shimmer on the short-lived water poplargrowing awkward out of a rocky hillside over the lake.