![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
He is an automated lighthouse.
The rising ocean levels
are up to his chin now
and climbing;
an inch every year.
He still barber poles around.
Still operational.
Warning ships that are no longer there
of rocks that are no longer a threat
because there aren't many people left.
Shining his light inches above the new sea level
barely above the waves
lighting them up at night
and startling the forgetful fish inside.
The silence inside him
is comforting.
No claustrophobia possible
because there's no one inside to experience it.
The cold aquatic pressure on everything from the neck down
turning him into a silent vertical empty submarine
spiked into what used to be a coast.
A monument
His own leftover
A warning of fire
Turned electric
Turned automated
Turned into a headstone
With a silent white siren on the top.
A new hazard to ghost ships.
Sometimes he pretends he’s shrinking,
that he is the one changing and the world is not.
It’s a comforting delusion
but it doesn't last.
Running for years without maintenance
because he was well-made.
A possessed cyclops;
head spinning calmly.
Comfortingly.
While gulls wheel
and the world drowns.
The rising ocean levels
are up to his chin now
and climbing;
an inch every year.
He still barber poles around.
Still operational.
Warning ships that are no longer there
of rocks that are no longer a threat
because there aren't many people left.
Shining his light inches above the new sea level
barely above the waves
lighting them up at night
and startling the forgetful fish inside.
The silence inside him
is comforting.
No claustrophobia possible
because there's no one inside to experience it.
The cold aquatic pressure on everything from the neck down
turning him into a silent vertical empty submarine
spiked into what used to be a coast.
A monument
His own leftover
A warning of fire
Turned electric
Turned automated
Turned into a headstone
With a silent white siren on the top.
A new hazard to ghost ships.
Sometimes he pretends he’s shrinking,
that he is the one changing and the world is not.
It’s a comforting delusion
but it doesn't last.
Running for years without maintenance
because he was well-made.
A possessed cyclops;
head spinning calmly.
Comfortingly.
While gulls wheel
and the world drowns.
