The Lighthouse and the Hourglass - Musée Mécanique

There are many more of us

Scattered sails among the gusts

Coursing ‘cross these haunted tides

With a reason and a guess.

Maybe ours is not of hope —

Maybe our fates lead astray —

For the spell has once been cast,

and once it takes,

We only gather ‘round the light and fire the hourglasses make.

There are stills beneath our beds

Stoked by branches of our fallen family trees

There is comfort dressed in casket clothes

And a bottle embalms us as we go.

Well there comes a time to raise

A flag we’ve managed for so long

That is hidden in the waves among the graves of mariners' children

Who mistook the ocean’s way.

There’s a lighthouse by the bay

Where our ships and faiths are safe

And with every fading flash

Another wave has crashed

And every grain of sand is sifting through the hourglass.

There are lines meant to cross

There are burdens meant to stand

There are curses that the follies of our great grandfathers and their wives

Have cast upon our lives.