The black water.
Lights dotting the entire perimeter.
Their shaky reflections.
The dark tree line.
The plap-plapping of water around the pier.
Creaking boats.
The creaking pier.
Voices in conversation, in discussion—two men, adults--serious inflections (the words themselves just out of reach).
A rusty screen-door spring, then the door swinging shut.
Footsteps on a porch, the scrape of a wooden chair.
Footsteps shuffling through sand, animated youthful voices (how many?—-distinct, disappearing.
A sudden guffaw; some giggles; a woman's—no, a young girl's—sarcastic reply; someone's assertion; a high-pitched male cackle.
Somewhere else a child laughing.
Bug-zappers.
Tires whirring along a pavement . . . not stopping . . . receding.
Shadows from passing headlights.
A cat's eyes caught in a headlight.
No moon.
Connect-the-dot constellations filling the black sky—the ladle of the Big Dipper not quite directly overhead.
The radio tower across the lake, signaling.
Muffled quacking near the shore; a frog belching; crickets, cicadas, katydids, etc.—their relentless sexual messages.
A sudden gust of wind.
Branches brushing against each other--pine, beech.
A fiberglass hull tapping against the dock.
A sudden chill.
The smell of smoke, woodstove fires.
A light going out.
A dog barking; then more barking from another part of the lake.
A burst of quiet laughter.
Someone in the distance calling someone too loud.
Steps on a creaking porch.
A screen-door spring, the door banging shut.
Another light going out (you must have just undressed for bed).
My bare feet on the splintery pier turning away from the water.
-- by Lloyd Schwartz
(from Cairo Traffic, University of Chicago Press)
I just got back from Tanglewood where I had my first meeting with the composition fellows who are setting my poems to music. But before I tell you about that encounter, let me first tell you about… the ghost! As I’ve already written, we were being put up at Seranak, the cozy 34-room guest cottage near Tanglewood with the great view (actually, a mansion shouldn’t be called a “cottage” unless it has a minimum of 36 rooms). We were greeted by Peter Grimm, the delightful and knowledgeable manager-overseer of the estate, who eagerly showed us around and made us feel perfectly “at home.” Our room for this weekend, to our surprise, was actually Serge Koussevitzky’s own bedroom, a spacious room with the best view of the lake and the distant hills. Between the two front windows stood an old
Lloyd Schwartz is Frederick S. Troy Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Classical Music Editor of The Boston Phoenix, and a regular commentator for NPR's Fresh Air. His most recent book of poems is