Across the darkened water burned the lights
of one old harbor, seasons long ago;
the island slept beneath a silver moon,
while tides pulled me where I could not go.
I once mistook the calm for something soft—
a lantern trembling on a quiet bay;
but stone remembers every winter sea
that broke against it, then drew away.
The harbor held because it had been struck;
storm-taught, its walls sheltered calm.
I watched until its lamps were lost from sight.
5d ago
May 30, 2026 at 10:03 AM UTC
Across the darkened water burned the lights
of one old harbor, seasons long ago;
the island slept beneath a silver moon,
while tides pulled me where I could not go.
I once mistook the calm for something soft—
a lantern trembling on a quiet bay;
but stone remembers every winter sea
that broke against it, then drew away.
The harbor held because it had been struck;
storm-taught, its walls sheltered calm.
I watched until its lamps were lost from sight.
The Harbor Held is a restrained lyric meditation on distance, memory, and the hidden strength beneath peace. On the surface, the poem presents a speaker looking back across dark water toward the fading lights of an old harbor, unable to return to what once felt safe and luminous.
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