Two Summers

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....