The Lantern by the Door

My father's lantern, dented on one side

from when it fell that winter crossing back,

hung every night beside the kitchen door.

Kerosene and decay. The glass gone yellow

like old pages of a book. A working thing

that knew the path better than we did.

I walk toward it now across fifty-seven years.

The actual depth of night, rather than memory.

between the shed and house, the way your hand

found the latch by that small radius of light,

how the flame inside its tin kept breathing

while the mountain held its breath around you.

My mother wiped the chimney every week.

Said fire needs its window clean to see by,

though what it saw was only what we brought it

our faces glowing, the table grain,

the corner where the broom stood, the old floors

scarred from boots that tracked the weather in.

At the kitchen table, doing sums by it,

I'd watch the shadows multiply and shift

across my notebook. Numbers climbing

into darkness, coming back as other things

the ladle's profile on the cupboard door,

my own hand grown enormous on the wall.

Some nights the wick burned low and Father rose

without a word to trim it. Opened the glass,

turned the small brass wheel. That gesture,

an absolute certainty, the way he'd blow

to clear the smoke, then close it back again.

His thumbnail black against the light.

Now I have electric. Switches on the wall

that flood a room with nowhere left to hide.

No adjusting, coaxing, tending flame.

But when the power fails and the house goes still,

I find myself attending to the silence

the way we used to. I light a candle,

watch it make its small insistence. Here,

a circle you can work in. Here, enough

to see your hands, the task, the table's edge.

The lantern's gone. Rusted through and thrown

before I thought to ask for it. But I know

its weight, how it swung beside your knee,

the kerosene sloshing, how you'd set it down

when something needed fixing,

and it would wait there, faithful as a dog.

Light is not the gift. Location is.

The kept flame saying this is distance,

this is measure. This is how far the house

stands from the barn, how many steps

from woodshed back to door, from lost to found.

I am still walking toward that door,

my hands remembering the split wood's heft,

the pump handle's arc, the lantern's wire bail

warm from the kitchen, going out to do

the last checks before bed. The mountain

breathing its slow cold around the light

that marked our place in it. That small

persisting argument against the night

not triumph, nor defeat. Just the flame.

The hand that holds it. The path home.