Salt air eats the photograph edges
Highway curves where kelp forests ledges
Your thumb traces the overpass arc
Faded ink marks where the light left its mark
Postcard reads like a lighthouse log
Coastal road through the salt and fog
Salt & asphalt that's the trade
One life built one life paid
Corner store sells bait and cigarettes
Tourists photograph the silhouette
You remember climbing those iron stairs
Counting flashes saying prayers
Now the lens sits dark in a museum case
Progress paved over the holy place
Postcard reads like a lighthouse log
Coastal road through the salt and fog
Salt & asphalt that's the trade
One life built one life paid
Storm nights you trimmed the wick by hand
Wind howling round the tower band
Ships horns answered low and long
You kept the rhythm steady strong
Now guardrails gleam where rocks once tore
Hulls apart on the hidden shore
Postcard reads like a lighthouse log
Coastal road through the salt and fog
Salt & asphalt that's the trade
One life built one life paid
Mail comes weekly to the keeper house
Forwarded from a spouse's spouse
This card arrived with no return
Just a highway curve you'd learn
To recognize in dream fragments
Salt stained corners torn fragments
The light don't shine the road don't care
Salt eats steel wind strips bare
But your fingers know the paper grain
Every crease every weather stain
You were the beam now you're the ghost
Watching travelers miss the coast
Back of the card has three words scrawled
Still burning Harold wrote
Harold kept the logbook clean
Harold knew what the numbers mean
You trace the overpass one last time
Then drop the card in the tide line
Postcard reads like a lighthouse log
Coastal road through the salt and fog
Salt & asphalt that's the trade
One life built one life paid
Salt & asphalt that's the trade
One life built one life paid
Tide takes the ink tide takes the card
You walk back where the light used to guard
