Runes I Carried Alone

Intro

Lantern room, forty steps up a spiral of rust,

Carved a notch for every hull that beat the gust.

Father's hand on the brass wheel, taught me the turn,

Said the coast forgives silence, never forgives the ones who burn.

Verse

Nineteen when they buried him under the dune,

Salt in the pine box, foghorn for a tune.

Took his ledger from the coat, ink soft with rain,

Every storm he logged a name, every name a chain.

Three hundred forty nights I climbed that same stone stair,

Kerosene on my knuckles, thick smoke in my hair.

Watched a trawler crack the reef like a dropped plate,

Pulled four men from the wake, lost one to the wait.

Carved a rune for the living, carved one for the lost,

Learned the light don't count what a keeper's quiet cost.

Mother said the tower swallows men who love it best,

Gave it both my shoulders, gave it all the rest.

Rope burn healed to scar, scar turned into a map,

Traced the coastline in my palm just to find the gap.

No relief boat came for weeks, we split the last of bread,

Kept the flame lit anyway, kept it for the dead.

Chorus

Runes I carried alone,

carved in ash and stone,

the light don't need a witness

to prove that it was thrown.

Every mark's a debt paid,

every scar's a home,

I built my name in silence—

runes I carried alone.

Verse

Grandfather kept this light through the blackout years,

Painted the glass half black to blind the periscopes and fears.

Signal book hid in the floorboard, flash by careful flash,

One long, two short meant the convoy's turning fast.

They told him douse it fully, told him let the dark decide,

He cracked the shutter anyway, saved the ones outside.

Court paper came for him, folder thin as a knife,

The wreck report saved his neck, gave the man his life.

Passed the wheel to my father, father passed to me,

Three generations reading weather off a restless sea.

Same brass compass, same worn groove beneath my thumb,

Same cold water teaching where the mercy comes from.

No plaque in the harbor names the men who stood the flame,

Just a bloodline built on watching, never asking for the fame.

I keep the log in his cursive, add my own beneath,

Every wave that didn't take us left us proof and teeth.

Chorus

Runes I carried alone,