- Song of the Lake -

By John Herlihy

The logs of white birch for the fire burned bright,

Filling the darkness with the illumination of night.

All afternoon, gathering wood had been their chore,

Now neatly stacked by the tent as a convenient store.

The two men settled into leisure enforced by the dark,

A well-earned rest after an arduous day in this nature park.

Another cold winter night in the long history of wilderness;

Icicles sparkled in the trees, with moonlight as tenderness.

Their canoe rested keels-up against a tree nearby the woods;

Their ears and heads protected snugly in their fur hoods.

Dinner had been practical and brief, a rich meat-broth stew,

Ran down their gullets with a burning bolt of whiskey brew.

They settled down by the fire to enjoy the silence and listen,

To watch the slow rising of the moon as the stars glisten.

The sparks of the fire chased the curlicues of rising smoke,

Arousing memories that followed them into this place remote.

The dirge of a wind approached quietly from the far north,

Invading the night silence moving stealthily thru the trees forth.

Of a sudden, they heard the frozen lake issue a proper moan;

The son felt the air pulse a rhythm, then heard another groan.

“That’s the ice,” the father said, “from a spring feeding the bay.”

The ice now musical, a low note of a clarinet having its way.

“Beautiful, no?” the father said, “Never heard that before?”

“No,” the son replied in awe, “but I sure want to hear more.”

The father tucked in wool, “Just the bay settling in for the night;
The son pulled up his own blanket, but his eyes still shone bright.

Years later, the son remembered the strange and lovely sound,

Long after his father passed beyond and was no longer around.

After days of hacking the ear-splitting wood to drain all gladness,

To hear something like music brought relief and a great sadness.

All the ancient mysteries of the earth gathered here in one place,

The night sounds native and wild as if coming from outer space.

The ancient lore of wilderness and wind told a remarkable tale,

To raise inner spirits out of their bodies as if by reading braille.

Destined to fill their souls on a cold winter night for just a while,

A moment of pure euphoria, for them alone, sitting by a wood pile.

The son closed his eyes then as if he had been taken far away;

When he opened them, the clouds of the night sky whistled away.

With the rustling of the tree branches whose coat of ice did chime,

Echoing into his sleepy ears with their melodic, hypnotizing rhyme.

The twinkling stars overhead seemed to snap like embers in the fire,

While the frozen ice of the lake sang on about the mystery of desire.

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(c) John Herlihy 31 January 2019