my father paints the
summer, caught summer always
an imagined time
A smoky rain riddles the ocean plains,
Rings on the beaches’ stones, stomps in the swales,
Batters the panes
Of the shore hotel, and the hoped-for summer chills and fails.
The summer people sigh,
“Is this July?”
They talk by the lobby fire but no one hears
For the thrum of rain. In the dim and sounding halls,
Din at the ears,
Dark at the eyes well in the head, and the ping-pong balls
Scatter their hollow knocks
Like crazy clocks.
But up in his room by artificial light
My father paints the summer, and his brush
Tricks into sight
The prosperous sleep, the girdling stir and clear steep hush
Of a summer never seen,
A granted green.
Summer, luxuriant Sahara, the orchard spray
Gales in the Eden trees, the knight again
Can cast away
His burning mail, Rome is at Anzio: but the rain
For the ping-pong’s optative bop
Will never stop.
Caught Summer is always an imagined time.
Time gave it, yes, but time out of any mind.
There must be prime
In the heart to beget that season, to reach past rain and find
Riding the palest days
Its perfect blaze.
My Father Paints the Summer by Richard Purdy Wilbur in The Poems of Richard Wilbur (Harcourt, Brace: New York, 1947).
About Mr. Wilbur, Wikipedia says, “Richard Purdy Wilbur (March 1, 1921 – October 14, 2017) was an American poet and literary translator, and one of the foremost poets of the World War II generation. Wilbur’s work, often employing rhyme, and composed primarily in traditional forms, was marked by its wit, charm, and gentlemanly elegance. He was acclaimed in his youth as the heir to Robert Frost, translated the verse dramas of Moliere, Corneille, and Racine into rhymed English, collaborated with Leonard Bernstein as the lyricist for the opera Candide, and in his old age acted, particularly through his role in the annual West Chester University Poetry Conference, as a mentor to the younger poets of the New Formalist movement. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987 and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice, in 1957 and 1989.”
About the photo, if I think about my Dad, I cannot but think of my Dad at what we called ‘The Cottage.”
In the Spring of 1964, when I was 4 years, my Dad but a piece of property on the shore of Lake Michigan, a straight drive out M-45 to the lake from Grand Rapids where we lived.
It became our summer place and our place for summer time and it is where my Dad painted the summer.
In a letter written home from Europe during World War 2, my Dad told the woman who would become my Mom that “He liked to live in the whole house” which I took to mean that in his home, there would be nothing for show, no rooms reserved for company, he would live in the WHOLE house.
You could not have described life at our cottage any better.
My Dad lived in the whole place.
Every inch of property, cottage and beach was set aside to be used and used pretty much for anyone’s personal enjoyment.
I have never been any where else in the world that I experienced such freedom to live, explore, read, think or do anything that came to mind.
There was a lot of trust involved here and for the most part, we repaid that trust and just LIVED the heck out of this place.
Look at the photo.
A large, ungainly structure covered with windows for viewing the lake, chairs for sitting, towels drying, toys scattered all over for playing, a grill for cooking, sails for the sailboat propped up against the stairs and thousands of footprints of the 100s of people that made up our summers at the lake.
All in a place provided by my Dad.
My father painted the summer with a big thick brush and broad strokes.
The year after my Dad died, Mom sold the place.
She said, and understand the entire time we had the cottage it was the Hotel Lorraine and everyone was welcome, she said, “It was my place to be with Dad.”
Caught Summer is always an imagined time.
Time gave it, yes, but time out of any mind.
There must be prime
In the heart to beget that season, to reach past rain and find
Riding the palest days
Its perfect blaze.
Forgive but I have to repeat that line again where Mr. Wilbur writes, Caught Summer is always an imagined time.
Was it real?
Could it have been that way?
Caught Summer is always an imagined time.
I am here to tell you, it was all too real and when I think about it, I think of my Dad and I say thank you for the gift of all those summers you painted for us.
