The Lakehouse
Lost in time and images of rhododendron woods
that flanked and nearly swallowed up the narrow, dirt-packed path
which descended from behind the house
through sloping brush and sunlit shade
and ended at the simple dock which sat in sunlight all alone
absorbed in an illusion which it harbored of itself,
the lines and angles clarify, coalesce, consolidate,
as the Lakehouse transports me
to years when I was someone else,
a time machine constructed with meticulous design,
absent all instructions, devoid of any plans,
out of simple things like friendship and love.
I can see them through the shadows now,
as clear as if it were today,
Eli brandishing the Scrabble board
(I rarely won a game unless he made some huge mistake),
Nancy with the bowl of home-made spinach dip
(I counted on it like a dog his bone),
two faces smiling though the world be angry,
two who listened long and well even when the world was deaf,
two who waited by the door, though the hours slipped away,
as my arrival often was held hostage by delay,
a hero’s welcome lavished on a lone intrepid me
who had left Manhattan’s skyline far behind in others’ keeping
and found his way as though across a continent and destiny.
Long before we happened by, in what must have been a different age,
someone we would never know but owed a debt to nonetheless
had come upon a sparkling lake well-hidden off the beaten path
and mapped about one hundred sites on each of which a lucky few
designed and built what they conceived the most idyllic getaway,
each house embraced by loving woods and spaced enough apart
it seemed a sovereign princely fief for refugees from urban strife.
And yet there was in this remote and somewhat rustic magic world
a sense of common solitude resulting in community
with meeting-house and local store situated at one end
right before one crossed a bridge onto the road around the lake.
But just to reach the entry lodge and realize the land was claimed
required traveling several miles through a forested preserve,
first having left the nearest road to take an unmarked doubtful turn
which I had missed when first I came in search of respite and reprieve.
Those were the years when I had signed a treaty with myself
to celebrate all that I had, accepting things that would not be.
Yet the Lakehouse played a featured role in fostering diplomacy,
providing proximate, adjacent footholds for territories I had lost
and deep, year-round, warm-water ports all throughout the winter days.
It was not mine, would never be,
yet offered the affirming comfort of my still belonging there,
a gift which the reluctant world gives many only grudgingly
and with petty stipulations and conditions to be met
which in this place and at this time had all been waived for me.
For a day or two or three, when it was needed most,
the Lakehouse bathed in filtered light was indeed a sanctuary.
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It mostly was late Saturdays when classes ended for the week
and I had shaken each small hand and said “Good night” to every child
that I set forth to wend my way to life beside the hidden lake.
My contribution to the cause of turning off a busy world
was often paid in bags of bagels and both kinds of favored lox
with several different types of cream cheese
and a somewhat slimy, full-length whitefish
trick-wired with a thousand bones,
all of which came duly blessed by Barney Greengrass on the West Side
two blocks south of Heaven’s Gate.
The kids by then were grown but not exactly on their own,
post-college with apartments but often still around,
and so one never knew if David might appear
with tales of the City and the businesses he tried
before he really made his mark, married, and then moved
clear across the country to far sunnier a coast,
or if Melissa might decide this home away from childhood home
was a fitting compromise for an independent-minded soul.
There are still a pair of neurons which fire in my brain
to conjure up mid-afternoon far out in the waiting lake
where a swimmers platform bobs around in its solitary place
to mark where our little cove meets the longer, wider depths.
And there are Frankie and Melissa gladly splashing time away
as though it matters not at all and never will for us.
Watercolors weave among the memories of morning walks
along the lakeshore path and turns, always leading home again,
where abstract paintings often hung, after Nancy deemed each done,
but sometimes disappeared for weeks to hang in public shows.
One painting in particular often caught my eye and heart,
a brown-and-yellow Rorschach quest
which was to me Creation made quite manifest.
But one dark night when I arrived I found it fully wrapped and tied,
awaiting me to claim and keep, a prize now valued even more,
which hangs above the open doorway to the family room at home.
But lakes are made for more than walking safe on the perimeter,
so there were days when Eli steered us out beyond the little cove
and straight across the warp and woof of what were then our present lives.
And afterwards the two of us, braver than an hour before,
would sit and talk of college days and boys and girls who’d been good
friends
and who we had not seen in years and would not likely see again,
or how life is hard and sweet and strange
with signposts missed and signals mixed,
and we would laugh aloud and mourn alike and share as only old pals can
the melancholy afternotes of music once sublime.
At some point between his youth and his infirmity,
not all at once as if it were one enormous gulp
but over several weeks or years, as each may find he needs,
a man must come to know the scale and true scope
of what ambition and the world are prepared to offer him
and strike a rightful balance between the happenings of life
and how he might have organized the Scheme of All Great Things,
if it had been the task which fate assigned to him.
At that point, looking back to the forks in many roads,
cognizant each choice he’s made informs those still ahead,
he comes to know his real self and holds that fellow tight.
It is then the need to triumph and each day announce himself
gives way to more delicious and auspicious states of mind
which calculate the value of an autumn afternoon
with little going on except the wonders of the world.
I made my peace and found that friend and breathed in deep
in rhododendron-heavy woods in my Lakehouse years.
The Lakehouse was an interval, a brief few years, a frame of mind,
the promise of well-being in a world too compromised,
a motif that returns for me each spring in mountain laurel time,
a bit delayed and reticent and needing some encouragement,
which spoke in subtle colors washing each into the other
to kindred spirits cast upon the ever turning tide.
