Cottage on the Pond by Robert Demaree

1. Closing up the Cottage September 1986

My dad’s last summer on the pond
I flew up Labor Day
To help close up, drive them home.
The airport bus
Only came as far as Dover.
Somehow they managed to get there,
Him wandering around the restaurant,
Agitated,
My mother with the
Caregiver’s exhausted sadness.
The restaurant is still there,
Different name, different owners:
I pass by that place
And still feel
An unbidden welling up,
How one thing comes
To stand for another.

2. Closing up the Cottage October 2012

To our cottage on the pond,
I ascribe human attributes,
And why not:
Four generations of
Idiosyncratic postures,
Favorite chairs,
The smiles of grandsons
Around each corner,
In every splash off the dock,
Scent of decades of pine rooms,
My father’s shaving brush,
Memories in other artifacts
We did not buy.

So when we leave,
Packing up board games
Along with Beth’s shy grin,
We ease out onto the lane,
Regret visceral
Until about the Massachusetts line.
The cottage, at first forlorn,
Has figured out what’s going on,
Recognizes the red kayak,
An intruder in the guest room,
But, relaxing under its cover of
Newspaper, moth balls,
Frayed bedspreads,
Like an old bear we know,
Dozes off for the winter.

3. Opening up the Cottage June 2020

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.



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.