My New England Summer Rental

“My New England Summer Cottage (Draft 3)”CopyrightOct. 19, 2022 POEM by Steve Kulberg  

Only sober books are read here
Solemn volumes on a fixed bookshelf
My Summer rental brims with Wisdom
From narrow-minded, sun-bleached marble tracts

The Landlady tosses the keys into a ceramic bowl
It makes a tolling sound.
She hasn’t been this happy in a long time.
Renting her Summer lease, down the longest road she knows

The Sea crouches at a distance
It’s a feature of the Bay Window
There, a bench pretends to some comfort
Its cushion’s corners match the brittle walls.

The eaves leave perfect shadows
Along with the tree’s leaves, moved by breezes
They stir when pages turn,
All but brooding over my shoulder

Sun and shadow define the room
A bookend of a wall confronts its counter-part
Across the room
Still, but sullen, they hold their tongues as expertly as cabinet finery.

The Sea is full of Disorder
Short streams, and tall white caps
Rack the rocks, and soak the strand

Beneath the Sea, there is invisible spiraling,
Currents weaving intertwining
Lost loves and The-Ones-Who-Got-Away
The Sea holds The Past Itself in dark caverns.
Wary fish turn away from there -unschooled

I hear The Sea from my window seat
Beating down the sea cliffs
I hear The Surf cackle, sigh, and whisper
Grasping in vain from the eddys

The Landlady is known to be so severe to her neighbors
Now she is my manic Counterpart… her dance-in-delight
Has her jewelry

She hasn’t been this happy in a long time.
Renting her Summer lease, down the longest road she knows

As an afterthought, she gives me directions where Milk and Eggs can be found.
I nod, but I can’t follow her. Besides, that shop is never open.
She slips out so merrily, I barely hear the key in her song.
I’m on the bare bench, beside the Bay Window.

Curled against the panes, I shiver in this tiny space.
Tinier in Twilight, tinier after Midnight, restored by Dawn.
The Sea is merely a feature in my Bay Window
Like the kitchenette, washer, hot water as advertised in the Classified

The Sea, retreating, and exceeding, washes at the reeds
I watch the tangled waves comb out at the shore.
My finger is held by a volume I’m reading. I’ve made it
A place-marker in a book I can barely get into. Onion skin pages, tiny footnotes…

They say the reeds hold the shore up, My finger is sore from holding
My place in this binding
But I grasp it fearing I’d lose my place, and be rendered
As disorderly as The Sea.