An Illusion of What Was

The lake is still beneath it's inches thick covering of ice
It is early March after all
The orange snowfence on the beach blights the view somewhat
But not too much

The stones beneath my butt are cold
The kind of cold that won't go away
That will seep up into you as you sit
Until you get up moving like the old man you are becoming

Beneath those paving stones is the concrete seawall
The seawall that your grandfather poured himself
Some sixty plus years ago
Somewhere down there
Underneath the blown in sand and light coating of snow
Is your mother's initials and the year it was set
She was about ten years old

I'm sitting on what looks like a stoop facing south
From the front of an old brownstone building
Sort of
It's a set of steps with walls jutting alongside them
I like to sit here on the wall on one side or the other
Usually dependent upon where the sun is

At the top of the stairs
On either side
Are two lampposts
Originally black they are now white
With fancy little tops on them for the lights

There is a sidewalk leading up behind me
To the house
This is an old concrete walk covered in newer pavers
Much like the ones on the steps

All this that I've described
Is all that is left

And sitting here I can almost pretend that it is as it was
My back to reality
The steps and beach much the same as they always have been
I can deny what really is

Until I have to go back inside
And turn around
Reality not what the faded picture in my mind is at all

Grandfather's cottage just a wispy mirage
Batted away with the turn of a head