yaquina light

there was a light in the darkness
where I grew up
a light much like this on a headland
very much the same
but four and a half thousand miles
across an ocean and a continent

a sweeping beam
to remind all sea-gone sailors
where land begins
a reminder of stone and shore
and the graveyard hulks that lie
like the discarded bones of memory

© BH, 2026

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Short form. But, yes, also a memory. More than a decade ago, I wrote ‘American Lights’, a homage to lighthouses on the waters, coastal and lakeside, of the USA. The original inspiration was the light at Point Bolivar, on Crystal Beach near Galveston, which I visited with my daughter and family in 2015.

This year, she visited Moolack Beach near Yaquina Head Light, referenced in that earlier poem, along with Heceta Head, just down the coast where she’d initially hoped to stay on that trip.

The image, by the way, is of Yaquina Head Lighthouse: two images combined, one by day , one by night, plus a wreck on Moolack Beach where the lighthouse photos were taken.