What Keeps the Keeper

The modern lighthouse is automated:
no more oil lamps to trim, clockwork to wind,
for when we think of light and lens and night,
we conceive the keeper, perhaps awake,
perhaps tinkering at whatever keeps
the keeper distracted from their shelter.
Because we all know a person sometimes
needs a place to hide away the world,
this world with everything that should be left
unspoken of, left in the dark, away
from the all-seeing eye of adulthood.

Now, where are our outposts? Our high castles
that promise that most abstract of being:
safety, the safety of the surrounding sea.