Point Freya

Part I

In summertime, on calmish days,
Arthur would have his driver
pilot the cabin cruiser around Point Freya
and out to a spot where
the current would drift them back home.

He'd spend those days writing music,
drinking beer, and shooting his empties
with a sawed-off, double-barreled twelve gauge
which he liked to call “the Devil's Derringer.”

Whenever he needed a second shot at a bottle,
he'd switch to writing lyrics.
If he missed his second shot,
he'd quit for the day and have his driver
take them back to the cottage.

Usually, though, temperance
and a steady aim would keep them drifting
through a breezy afternoon
and they'd sight Point Freya
in time for dinner.

That was decades ago.
The glass has been tumbled by the current,
washed around the point and down the coast.
Sand and silt have rubbed away the edges
and calloused the faces.

Waves are now depositing the pieces
all along the public beaches.
Children gather them;
ersatz jades and smoky faux topazes
and the precious, rare sapphires.

Part II

A mother and daughter
trapped three days by rain
in a beach house.

Intolerable to both
so the daughter, Violet, fled to the attic
while her mother painted
in the sunroom.

Bundles of National Geographic
occupied a day and a half;
day three, Violet found a few hats she liked
and several boxes of notebooks
filled covers-to-margins with music.
No author attributed.

As summers came round and around
the mystery drove her to improve;
to practice at the piano;
to untangle the pages of notes.
She emptied the attic and made it her woodshed;
she saved up for a used four-track recorder;
she drove herself to mastery.

And songs which seemed unrelated to each other
seemed more and more to be related to a third song
which she simply hadn't found yet.

So she wrote it.

She laid down tracks, mixed and mashed,
and the shape of the missing music
began to resolve in her mind.
When she hummed this newer tune
other songs from the notebooks
would slot themselves with a visceral click
into the melody.

She worked urgently
and as the spiral of her song climbed,
she compiled concertoes and fugues
from the pages she'd found
and hooked them to it like ornaments onto a tree.

The music flowed
like a cabin cruiser drifting home in the afternoon;
like pieces of sea-glass
tumbling through the surf off of Point Freya.