Long Pont's apparitional <br />this warm spring morning, <br />the strand a blur of sandy light, <br /> <br /> <br />and the square white <br />of the lighthouse-separated from us <br />by the bay's ultramarine <br /> <br /> <br />as if it were nowhere <br />we could ever go-gleams <br />like a tower's ghost, hazing <br /> <br /> <br />into the rinsed blue of March, <br />our last outpost in the huge <br />indetermination of sea. <br /> <br /> <br />It seems cheerful enough, <br />in the strengthening sunlight, <br />fixed point accompanying our walk <br /> <br />along the shore. Sometimes I think <br />it's the where-we-will be, <br />only not yet, like some visible outcropping <br /> <br /> <br />of the afterlife. In the dark <br />its deeper invitations emerge: <br />green witness at night's end, <br /> <br /> <br />flickering margin of horizon, <br />marker of safety and limit. <br />but limitless, the way it calls us, <br /> <br />and where it seems to want us <br />to come, And so I invite it <br />into the poem, to speak, <br /> <br />and the lighthouse says: <br />Here is the world you asked for, <br />gorgeous and opportune, <br /> <br />here is nine o'clock, harbor-wide, <br />and a glinting code: promise and warning. <br />The morning's the size of heaven. <br /> <br />What will you do with it?<br /><br />Mark Doty<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/long-point-light/
