Lower Lights
        an old hymn:
        Let the lower lights be burning
        Send a gleam across the wqy.
        Some poor fainting, struggling seaman,
        You may rescue, you may save.

As if a universe of black holes weren't out there,
sunset's spread evenly as watercolor, one stripe
of pure mango between ocean and dense fog.

I turn back on this strip of sand, away
from the headwind, to face the faded wool of day's end.
Pt. Wilson Light begins its rhythm, warning, saving,

Let the lower lights be burning—Mother's voice
swelled for the chorus as we drove Lake Washington's
shore of dusk-lit houses to pick up Dad from work.

He was her sailor miraculously spared
in the War's cruel shelling: The car's heat hushed
along my five-year-old bare legs, feet shoved into slippers

for the ride. On Whidbey tonight, across the stretch
of inland water, ambulances and squad cars whirl red.
Someone being saved. I seize on the bright panes

of the crossing ferry, even the icy fluorescence
which pours from these park restrooms—
gleams across the way. Gray, the tall windows

of my Kindergarten classroom, the kind eyes,
my teacher questioning why I clung to my chair
and cried. Neither of us could have defined

my yearning to be held. Evenings, Mother and I drove.
She sang her keeping of the lights along the shore.
One hand didn't leave the wheel to urge me

from the passenger arm rest toward her. Maybe
she didn't know herself why she couldn't.
After years, I was the one drawing away.

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Copyright © 2018 Alice Derry All rights reserved
from Hunger
MoonPath Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission