02-03-2026, 03:11 AM
Lake House edit (duke)
The tracks were laid a hundred years ago
to carry coal from nearby western states
and eastern tourists fleeing crowded streets.
A playground built for restless city folk:
the grand hotel that burned in 1912,
a rustic children's park with ride-on train
that wrapped around the boulders, through the grove.
At dusk young couples rowed across the lake
to anchor at a wooden stage and dance
the night away beneath a sea of stars.
They started building summer bungalows
to pass the months of stifling urban heat;
on little plots the wood-framed boxes rose
just barely large enough to load the kids
in bunks, have breakfast and a midday meal,
their dinners roasted on a lakeside fire.
A generation later, children raised
to cherish memories of nighttime swims
with laughter bouncing on the evening breeze
now questioned why they always had to leave.
Additions here, additions there expand
each little shelter bit by bit until
each one becomes a piecework of a home.
The tracks were laid a hundred years ago
to carry coal from nearby western states
and eastern tourists fleeing crowded streets.
A playground built for restless city folk:
the grand hotel that burned in 1912,
a rustic children's park with ride-on train
that wrapped around the boulders, through the grove.
At dusk young couples rowed across the lake
to anchor at a wooden stage and dance
the night away beneath a sea of stars.
They started building summer bungalows
to pass the months of stifling urban heat;
on little plots the wood-framed boxes rose
just barely large enough to load the kids
in bunks, have breakfast and a midday meal,
their dinners roasted on a lakeside fire.
A generation later, children raised
to cherish memories of nighttime swims
with laughter bouncing on the evening breeze
now questioned why they always had to leave.
Additions here, additions there expand
each little shelter bit by bit until
each one becomes a piecework of a home.