I will arise and go now to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
. . . always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
. . . I hear it in the deep heart’s core. . . .
— William Butler Yeats, “The Lake at Innisfree”
In 1923 Yeats became the first Irish recipient of the Nobel Prize. Life at a lake is different from town living. Talented poets express our innermost emotions. Vicki inscribed “Innisfree” on a drawing that she made of their charming little home. A grower of flowers, she has also kept bees.
As I write, the veil of early-morning mist has risen, and the lake’s surface is dappled with tree-shade and sun-glimmer. A robin loudly proclaims the birth of a new day. Quoth Tom, “If I had a gun, I’d shoot that bird. It wakes me up every morning.” “No you wouldn’t!” “I suppose not, but I’d sure be tempted!”
Niece Lynn spent the night before we went to a family gathering in Plymouth. After touring Lake Shafer, Tom moored the pontoon boat. We had drinks, nibbled snacks and told stories about Camp Lake north of Grand Rapids where Bill’s family had a cottage near where Lynn grew up.
When he was a young teacher Bill bought a used sail boat. He had never sailed a boat before. It was a windy day, and his sister Joyce said, “Do not take that boat out. It’s too rough.” Of course, the minute her back was turned, he and Joyce’s husband, Bill Drubert, set sail.
Out in the middle of the lake, the boom swung round and knocked Drubert overboard. There being no brakes on a boat, it kept sailing on. Bill panicked and dropped the sail and then was dead in the water. Duh! Of course, Drubert wasn’t wearing a life jacket! He kicked off his shoes and managed to float until passing fishermen rescued him and towed the sailboat to land. Joyce saw the whole thing happen while she was having a drink at the Pavilion that was down the hill from the cottage and was waiting with a full head of steam on shore when they returned.
When I was pregnant with Vicki, Bill borrowed a rowboat. The passenger sat on a plank laid across the gunwales. We floated to the lily pads at the shallow, mucky end of the lake. “Oh look, there’s a little turtle!” Bill leaned way over to grab it, the board slipped, dumped me overboard, and the boat was swamped. Thigh-deep in muck, we laughed so much that people wouldn’t stop to help us, probably thinking that we were drunk. We bailed out the boat with our shoes.
Lynn regaled us about spearing frogs whose legs her mother cooked. “You remove the frogs from the spear, take them by their hind legs, bang them against the ground to kill them and then cut off their legs. The first time I did it, I didn’t hit them hard enough, and they came back to life after I’d cut off their legs.” “Oh those poor little froggy amputees!” I moaned. Bill also went frogging when he was a kid.
In the East, the rising moon turned to gold as the westering sun flamed the sky. What could be better than remembering and laughing, moored between a golden moon and a red sunset? The Camp Lake people are gone now, and the cottage burned down . . . but we had this time together and our memories. wclarke@comcast.net