Lighthouse by Joseph Carrabis

My ancestors kept lighthouses to guide ships at sea safely to harbors, their bounty to share. My people light the skies of night hoping that one ship piloting the cosmos will return to save us. The seas gone, the forests no more, no animals other than man, this rock our home abhors.

Flee, they said. Flee, they called from far away, their great ships ready to save us. Their price a change in our ways.

But we would not, we could not, for their price was to admit mistakes and in all the universe Pride is the meaning of man. We the Garden lost twice, chose the Serpent's bite until our own ways poisoned us.

Return, we called. Return, we begged to unhearing skies.

These last lights, our hope, I keep them lit. The last of my kind, the last Adam.

No ships are seen. We learn too late our lights, our cries, keep them away, warn them we are here, fools to our own devices, Salvation's price too high.

Bio

Joseph Carrabis told stories to anyone who would listen starting in childhood, wrote his first stories in grade school and started getting paid for his writing in 1978. His work history includes periods as a long-haul trucker, apprentice butcher, apprentice coffee buyer/broker, lumberjack, Cold Regions researcher, mathematician, semanticist, semioticist, physicist, educator, Chief Data Scientist, Chief Research Scientist, Chief Neuroscience Officer, Neuromarketer-in-Residence, and Chief Research Officer. Prior to becoming a full-time author, Joseph sat on several advisory boards including the Center for Multicultural Science and the Journal of Cultural Marketing Strategy. He was a Senior Research Fellow at the Society for New Communications Research; an Annenberg Fellow at the University of Southern California's Center for the Digital Future; Director of Predictive Analytics, Center for Adaptive Solutions; and was an original member of the NYAS/UN's Scientists Without Borders program. He held patents covering mathematics, anthropology, neuroscience, and linguistics based on a technology he created in his basement and from which he created an international company. He retired from corporate life and now spends his time writing fiction and non-fiction based on his experiences. His work appears regularly in anthologies and his own novels. You can often find him playing with his dog, Boo, and snuggling with his wife, Susan. Learn more about him here and his work here. Please join Joseph on RoundTable 360 where creatives from across disciplines talk, share, and learn.