Summer Cottage 2020
- June
Our daughter and her husband
Came up this year
To help open the cottage
And by the time we arrived
Had done things we used to do:
Got the kayaks from the guest room
Down to the dock,
Swept up the thick yellow pollen
Left on the porch
By a New Hampshire spring,
Discarded the paper and mothballs
In which the furniture had slept.
We are older than my parents were
The last time they drove north.
We will pay to get some things done—
Pine straw off the roof;
Other things—the high windows
That face the water—may not get done.
I save for myself one task—I must:
Putting up our sign
At the head of the lane, our name,
The metal loon looking down
Toward the pond.
- September
Our daughter came back up
To help close the cottage.
We sat down and watched her
Wash the refrigerator.
82-year-old bones ache
From cleaning, packing, lifting,
From the subtle vibrations
Of two days on the road.
We stood one cold morning
By the side of
The Third Connecticut Lake
Wondering which would be
The penultimate trip north.
Back at Golden Pines
We are trying this morning
To remember how things work,
The TV, the toaster,
Computer, coffee maker.
Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders published in 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems have received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club. He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Bob’s poems have appeared in over 150 periodicals including Cold Mountain Review and Louisville Review.
You can find more of Robert’s work here on Ink Pantry.