THE FARAWAY LIGHT WE CAN’T SEE

I sit with my father
Skipping shells in the twilight
When the beach is empty
And the sky is clear

The last oystercatcher
Flies off from the shoreline
The cars on the street
Have all disappeared

The ocean turns silver
When the night comes down
The stars come out
And the wind comes around

We stand on the jetty
In the warm purple twilight
Casting for blackfish
When the world is asleep

My father shines like a faraway star
But this light, he cannot see
Instead, he finds it in the sky
Or as something that was passed down to me

My father's head is in the clouds
He's a traveler just like me
He was wounded in the war
With wounds that most people can't see

We stare too long into the sun
We share the same strange dreams
We can see without looking too far
When the night comes down on the beach

One day, we know, this will all be gone
Like fog rising over the sea
Memories exist, hanging in the air
As invisible things we can see

I used to think there was nothing at all
That remained of us after we died
But now I think that we carry on
As faraway pieces of light

When the storm came, and the night was long
When my sorrow was as big as the sea
A mysterious beacon lit up the night
A faraway light shined on me

When I leave my days behind
I'll exist as a memory
As the purple lightning in the summer sky
And as all of the light we can't see

Where lost souls wander in the night
My light will shine down on the sand
I'll walk with my father in the warm streetlight
The darkness will have no place to land

When the waves pull my body back into the sea
And my bones have turned back to sand
I'll feel myself in the ocean's arms
On the jetty, my father will stand

Life springs up again somewhere
Where my father turns the soil
The warm west wind brings in the spring
The twilight sky is purple

The tourists here will all have gone
The beach, it will be ours again
We'll cast for blackfish when the world is asleep
In the dream that we share with no end

The fog will lift, and the morning star
Will shine on the silvery sea
Me and my father will still exist
As the faraway light we can't see.