Autumn Comes to Lake Nebagamon

(poem suite)

I: Finding My Place

Were it not for the twenty-mile-per-hour gusts

Stirring up the air, to a majestic turbulence,

Tuning the trees to a sonorous, melodic cacophony,

This incandescent Lake Nebagamon afternoon,

These sixty-six degrees

Would actually be, if it's possible, almost too hot.

As was the case on my last visit, this past June,

The lake's surface is a frenzy of argent water spirits.

Only, this time, they recognize me; I'm certain of it.

But for all its boisterous noise,

This hazy-blue, sun-blazing Thursday

Finds its place, in the sheltering realm of my being,

So easily, so palpably, so peacefully, so naturally,

I might never have left here, three months ago.

Maybe, this trip, I won't go home.

II: Surprised

I don't know why I should be so surprised,

But I am, my cherished lake,

Surprised and extremely relieved, at the same time,

To see that you're still right here,

Precisely where I left you, in memory's keeping,

When I left you, last.

Ah, but that's just it, isn't it?

Lately, forgetting has been ravaging my domain,

Taking its toll on my cherished holdings,

Not least my hopes, my reveries, my dreams.

Even my capacious imagination

Has been ransacked by that mindless rapaciousness.

So maybe you can understand, even empathize,

When I express my surprise,

Especially over things I deeply treasure,

Like you, lake, my favorite place in my estate,

You matrix of my boyhood's coming of age.

I pray you'll never evaporate.

III: Poet and Egret

Egret, egret, you great white egret,

You strange, gawky, ungainly giraffe of a bird,

Standing there, just up the shore from my dock,

On those glossy black stalks that seem anchored in concrete,

All of you motionless, save for that elongated neck,

Ending in a yellow-billed head, with surveillant eyes,

Sweeping ceaselessly, like a lighthouse beacon.

Egret, egret, what kind of an existence is this,

That you pass your hours, in stasis, isolation,

Waiting for something to transpire, catch your attention,

Cause you to spurn inertia,

Set those stems in motion, release those wings,

Take flight, in search of life's vital inklings?

Could it be that, in you, I see more than a semblance of me?

IV: The Boys, the Leaves, and Me

My walk through the woods enveloping Camp Nebagamon

Is a blessing as well as a desolate undertaking.

I've been craving partaking of these exquisite environs,

All the while knowing that, in doing so,

I'd have to listen to the noise of invisible boys at play,

Lingering in the silent-singing wilderness,

And not only contend with their haunting presence

But confront my own, from so many years ago,

When I spent fourteen summers here, discovering myself.

As I go, the leaves, many still green,

In this near-autumn beginning of the winnowing,

Myriad others assuming the dazzling dapplings of decay

(Sugar and red maples turning, in nature's kaleidoscope,

From viridescence, through orange, to blazing regal crimson;

Pin oaks taking on the same hues, less dramatically;

American basswoods yellowing mutedly, translucently;

Staghorn sumacs donning scarlet shrouds;

Balsams, spruces, pines — witnesses to the quiet dying)...

The leaves seem to be falling in line, behind me,

Following my circuitous maneuverings through camp,

Almost as though I were a nurturing counselor,

Leading them on their first hike through this sacred garden,

Promising them that, come next spring,

We'll be back where we started on this late afternoon.

V: Another Day's Passing

From my table on this spacious wooden deck

Wrapping around the back of the Lawn Beach Inn,

Facing a lake anticipating another sun's spectacular plunge

Into the treeline horizon bordering the shore,

Another ivory moon's rise, over those same trees,

I survey the majesty of this anonymous, solitudinous village,

This sparsely populated refuge from the world at large,

Where I've come to disappear from whoever I was

Before I decided, in late middle age,

To barter my earthly estate, for a sunset or three of repose,

And I realize that the unpredictable remainder of my life

Is already in play, fulfilling its complicated destiny,

Trying to conclude whether I should go or stay,

Trust that my intuition is oracular, visionary,

Not just a fantasy fated to fade away, with the passing day.

VI: Lake Magic

Though I've been at the cabin not quite three days,

The lake's abracadabran incantations

Have worked their magic, on my brain.

Already, I can take the waves' temperature,

Record the fever chart of their heart,

As though I were measuring my own blood's heat,

Read between the lines of passing clouds,

Deciphering the primeval strata of the planet's existence,

Which contain dreams my being has deposited,

And translate the most minuscule sparkling of stars,

Recreating, from the celestial palimpsest,

A history of every moment in the annals of agelessness.

Yet what will remain for me to ascertain,

When I leave these shores, next week,

Is whether these newly gained powers will persist

Or dissipate to the point where I can't even see,

Let alone conjure, waves, clouds, stars,

For the black magic of the city's malevolent spells.

VII: Eloquence

Most people who own docks on Lake Nebagamon

Employ them for tying up boats

And as platforms from which to fish, at twilight,

The setting sun and rising moon

Mere backdrops for drinking beer and gabbing.

When I'm here, I gravitate toward dock's end,

Just to sit with open notebook, pen in hand,

And contemplate the grandeur of this tranquillity,

Hopeful that my spirit, longing for epiphany,

Might approximate nature's eloquence.

VIII: The Leaves

The peacefulness of this sleepy Sunday-morning village,

Now that the summer vacationers have departed

And autumn is creeping out of its leaves,

Cannot be fully appreciated in human measures;

The serenity of the changing landscape is just too ethereal.

Save for a lone bell, chiming its churchgoers to services,

The only sounds are those of the transfiguring leaves,

Whispering their deciduous threnodies,

Just weeks from fluttering down, to kiss the ground,

Receive reprieve from their timebound tethering.

And then there's me, who's never been a free spirit,

Located here, not quite by sheer coincidence,

Whose wish has been to go with the drift of things —

A flesh-and-bones soliloquy,

Declaiming, to the leaves, to the breeze, my ecstasy.

IX: The Berry Pickers

My excursion from Lake Nebagamon, yesterday afternoon,

Was worth every second of the hour-and-a-half drive

To Brule, then east, along Lake Superior's south shore,

Through the unincorporated communities

Of Port Wing, Herbster, and Cornucopia, to Bayfield,

Not so much for allowing me the opportunity

To contemplate the oceanic immensity of that freshwater body

But for letting me luxuriate in reminiscence,

Cast back to my first summer at the boys' camp,

When I, an introverted, self-conscious ten-year-old,

Spent half of one day, each week of the two-month session,

Picking blueberries, at Brule, with other less active kids,

Led by the camp's legendary director,

Max J. "Muggs" Lorber himself,

Who enticed us with promises of pies, that night, for dessert.

By the time I arrived at Blue Vista Farm,

Just outside the charming harbor-resort town of Bayfield,

Parked, surveyed the apple orchards overlooking the lake,

Admired the large, stone-and-wood-sided barn,

Where I got my requisite waxed box, I was primed,

Fully poised to indulge myself in a forgotten pastime,

Find, perhaps, in not-quite-idle preoccupation,

Something I might have left behind, in my haste to grow up.

And there they were: row upon row of blueberry bushes,

Waiting for me to contribute to the harvesting.

I set about fumbling among the branches of one.

The berries let loose of their stems, with the slightest prodding

From fingers that had last performed this task

Fifty-seven years before.

After a few minutes, my back asked me to sit down,

Continue my gleaning from a position more suitable to my age.

Then it was that I saw that berry picker from 1951,

Walking, groping, with his pail, through the wilds of Brule,

Searching for the sporadic laden bushes

(Things weren't so orderly, so guaranteed, in those days).

For an undisturbed hour, doubtless more,

With the sun's bracing chill warming my skin,

I exulted in filling that box, with those ripe indigo fruits,

Stopping, occasionally, to place one on my tongue,

Taste the mildly tart sweetness of its succulent meat.

Next thing I knew, my bounty had been weighed, paid for,

And my Bayfield idyll was finished.

All that was left to do was drive back to my cabin,

With my blueberries and that shy little boy,

Both of us happy again, liberated by such a simple joy.

X: Bois Brule

This past Friday afternoon,

I traveled the five miles, as the goshawk flies,

To the Winneboujou canoe landing, on the Bois Brule,

Just to stop for a while, stand there, mesmerized,

And watch the quick, rippling river

Meander through crosshatched shadows of the forest

Wandering down to the banks, to wade, cool off.

For what could have been mere minutes, lifetimes,

Just listening to that water skittering past me,

I actually began to believe I'd discovered,

If not the fountain of eternal youth,

At least the secret to the subtleties of aging gracefully,

What sages, contemplating time's passage, know:

Composure is in the soul of the beholder.

XI: Late-Afternoon Daydreaming, on the Dock

In the taller of the two patriarchal white pines

(It has to be at least 150 feet high,

Two hundred years old) in the lot next to my cabin,

There are a half-dozen or so vociferous crows

Frenetically flapping, from limb to limb,

Keeping vigil over something only they can fathom.

My eyes, drawn to the top of that vertiginous tree,

By the sound of the birds' black caterwauling,

Keep going higher and deeper, into the opalescent sky,

As if being beckoned to catch a ride

On one of the cumulus clouds swiftly drifting past,

Heading in a direction I've never charted,

Which should be perfect, regardless,

For where I'd like to end up, come sunset

(Let's just say I revel in taking my chances).

When vision finally climbs down the giant pine,

No crows are raucously caw-cawing.

Now, the waves, chasing those clouds, beckon me.

XII: Up All Night

Last evening, just around dusk,

I entered the quiescence of the boys' camp,

From the hill surmounted by the hibernating Big House.

And as I roamed through those abandoned surrounds,

Past the shuttered Swamper Village cabins

(Inhabited, ten months a year, by phantoms),

Then down to the tennis courts, lower diamond, shrine,

Out the range road, beyond the Axeman Village,

Before veering into the woods between me and the lake,

I realized how this eighty-year-old community,

Consisting of perhaps a hundred structures,

Is a mirror image, albeit in microcosmic proportions,

Of the Village of Lake Nebagamon itself —

An alter ego, a little brother,

The Big House its auditorium, the cabins its residences.

Just then, the breathing forest delivered me to the shore,

With barely five minutes to witness the flaming sun

Descend into the canopy of trees, on the near horizon,

Without setting the entire countryside on fire,

And leave, on the air, pink, purple, and orange smudges,

Its companionate swath flickering on the lake —

A shimmering bridge spanning the distance,

Neither asking me to cross it or turn my back

(That would have to be my decision, from start to finish).

Gradually, twilight laid its cloak of opaque silence,

With the subtle touch of a lover, over the waiting land.

Soon they would be sleeping side by side, under the stars,

While I, my bone marrow, my blood, my very being,

Would still be energized, by those muted hues,

Still be too ravished, by their beauty, to close my eyes.

XIII: Having Our Ways

From late last night,

Right on through this dull-gray Tuesday noon,

The wind has been an engine roaring, throttle open wide,

While I've hidden in this groaning, creaking cabin,

Satisfied to let it take the brunt of the lake's frontal assault,

And ridden out this persistent rain, without complaint.

With nowhere specific to go, no place I have to be,

No mandates to comply with, no reservations to arrive for,

What difference could my sublime submission possibly make?

Days like this have been strangers to my frenetic life,

Far too few, to have even eluded memory.

In truth, their existence, over my sixty-seven years, is a fluke.

So if, after all this wasted haste I've left in my wake,

I choose to call a halt to the hours,

Stay holed up, gazing at the roiling lake, the blustery sky,

I'm going to damn well do as I damn well please,

Proclaiming, This is my time, my freedom, my entitlement,

To achieve enlightenment, just by letting the day have its way!

XIV: Autumnal Moods

This Wednesday a.m., at my water's-edge cabin,

The sky is so matchlessly golden

And the lake so serenely one with its shoreline,

You might never guess the tempest that possessed it,

All yesterday and throughout the loud night —

Those intractable, cacophonous squalls of pure fury,

The swashbuckling rain, which started at five,

Just as I began my hike through the boys' camp,

And soaked my shoes, clothes, my flesh, to its bones,

That storm, which, by a sodden eight o'clock,

When I hoped to barbecue fresh coho salmon,

Had transformed into a Wagnerian opera

Of martial thunder and demonic lightning bolts

Arcing across the dark heavens, like an apocalyptic army,

Threatening my cabin, with instantaneous incineration.

You might never guess that this silent, cloudless, blue sky,

This placid, sun-faceted lake,

These trees, flaunting their coat-of-many-colors robes,

As though to disguise the beguilingly dying leaves —

Those of oaks, maples, sumacs, and basswoods —

Within their purview, their northern territorial keeping,

Endured such violent riot, just yesterday,

Or that this calm, balmy, sunny Lake Nebagamon day

Will, too soon, be lashed, ravaged, by winter's wrath.

XV: Sundowns

Tonight, just into my 7:20 flight out of Minneapolis,

Returning from the north country's glories,

I'm already sensing a melancholy emptiness

Welling in the pit of my spirit,

Threatening to make me soul-sick for Wisconsin.

Off to my right, a striated layer of colossal light,

Ranging hundreds of miles along the western horizon,

Hypnotizes the sky, with its voluptuous pastel hues —

Reds, pinks, roses, oranges, peaches, purples, indigos, violets —

Lending, to twilight's denouement, a spectacular coda.

Tracking it halfway back to St. Louis,

I no longer feel so disconsolate, somber, lonely,

As though that elongated glow, seen at 31,000 feet,

Were following me, guiding me home,

While tying my heart to Lake Nebagamon,

Where, for five of the last six evenings,

I watched the sun descend into forests bordering the water,

On whose shores I stood ravished, breathless,

More certain than ever before

That, finally, I'd found the locus of my life's quest.

09/29/08 - (2)