Lighthouse Keeper Poem by Charl JF Cilliers

Before technology overtook
human hands and heart
he chose to live in that remote nook
of time, without that world-
wide web that governs men, where wind
and stars and tides and sun moved
across the landscape of the mind
showing him what was ending
what had begun or would begin again. All
he had loved, had lost, was here
in the tall tower of his existence
where he climbed the heights each night
to secure the flame, to see and set it true,
to look into the night, out across turmoils
of waves, and emptiness, where only
a beam travelled from that tiny spark
his hands had made. He loved
his sure, true light that moved out
towards men who were perhaps also lost,
or merely wanted sight of something there,
who did not know him and yet trusted
the light his sure hands kindled in the dark of night.