Two Summers Poem by Daniel Brick

First Summer

The window framed a second-story room,
housing an upright piano, standard black
but with a glistening gold trim visible
to my sight, as I paused on the path
around Lake Como. I paused, leaning
against an accommodating tree, because
two people, a man at the piano, a woman
cradling a violin, performed music
I chose to regard as the sweetest sound
possible on a summer night. Was it Mozart?
Or Beethoven's Spring Sonata? Or did they
embrace the intensity of early Bartok?
Whatever music they played escaped
through the open window, fled across the lawn,
but vanished into the evening air
before it could reach my eager ears.
Oh, sweet sounds or bitter! Oh, well-played
or abysmal! What can a distant mime of music
reveal about their true intentions? But -
we agree a poem is the realm of possibilities,
let us make assumptions full of promise:
let it be then a zealous young violinist,
all of sixteen, and her aging maternal uncle,
a pianist of renown, her teacher, encouraging
her talent to sew the threads of even the slightest
etude into a fabric of beauty. Already her uncle
talks of music academies, when they rest, and
her shining eyes mist over as he raises dreams
to hopes, hopes to possibilities. And so a summer closes.

Second Summer

After the last ice released Lake Como
by late April, after May's sun dispelled
spring's overcast, after June presented
the first full days of summer, I walked
along my accustomed path, stopped at my
accustomed place, and indulged my
accustomed hopes. But the accustomed
window was shaded. I held my breath
for a third of that summer, until
one night in later July, the shade
was raised. But three blank walls
confronted my sight. No upright piano,
no musicians, the air held not the slightest
promise music might yet fill it. I circled
the lake twice, playing snatches of Brahms
and Mozart on my smiling memory...
Meanwhile, in some bustling city,
at a Music Academy, nestled among trees,
overlooking a river valley, the renowned pianist
introduces his shining niece to her first teacher,
a man of legendary skill at turning possibilities
into realities. And so another summer closes,
as music pours out of dozens of open windows....