CLOSING UP THE COTTAGE OCTOBER 2012
I ascribe human attributes,
To our cottage on the pond,
And why not:
Four generations of
Idiosyncratic postures,
Favorite chairs,
The smiles of grandsons
Around each corner,
In every splash off the dock,
Scent of decades of pine rooms,
My father’s shaving brush,
Memories in other artifacts
We did not buy.
So when we leave,
Packing up board games
Along with Beth’s shy grin,
We ease out onto the lane,
Regret visceral
Until about the Massachusetts
The cottage, at first forlorn,
Has figured out what’s going on,
Recognizes the red kayak,
An intruder in the guest room,
But, relaxing under its cover of
Newspaper, moth balls,
Frayed bedspreads,
Like an old bear we know,
Dozes off for the winter.
Poetry Society of New Hampshire
PIANO LESSONS
My lesson was before school.
My father waited in the car,
Smoke from his Lucky Strike
Clouding the windshield of
our ’48 Plymouth
Against a gray January sky
In Pennsylvania
We did not know to call it
the Rust Belt then.
My spinster teacher walked
about
Her Victorian row house,
Checking on an invalid mother
And calling out to me,
“I hear wrong notes.”
The house smelled of cooked
vegetables,
Even at 7:30
When Teddi Kalakos came for
her lesson.
She and I played a duet once,
K.P.E. Bach, it may have been.
Her family ran a restaurant;
She may have inherited it—I
don’t know,
One of many threads of the
plot
Lost over time.
Once a year Miss Edna would
take us
Into Philadelphia Reading
More than a Monopoly card,
Elegant iron horse, cold
coal-smoke dawn,
Dutch trainmen in shiny blue
suits
Calling out the station
stops:
Royersford, Conshohocken.
She let us shop at Gimbel’s,
Have lunch at Bookbinder’s,
Wasted on 12-year-olds,
And took us to the Academy of Music
The children’s concert,
Peter and the Wolf, no doubt.
Years, years later
My mother asked if I
remembered
Seeing Ormandy conduct.
