Solin · the words you have to say

The Beagle Channel runs toward the bottom of the world. There's a lighthouse on a small island there, on water the cormorants own. Built 1920. Its last keeper left decades ago; a solar panel runs the lamp now, and the lamp still turns. Faint in the daylight. Steady all night.

I found it on a day I needed to stand somewhere that kept its word. Nobody was home. The tower doesn't know it's making a promise. It just keeps its rounds: a promise kept to no one in particular, on the off chance someone is out there.

That's most of what keeping is, I think. Not ceremony. The light doing its rounds.