November Poem and Paintings

( Lake Champlain, Autumn Light;

Lake, Island, Clouds

Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown,

watercolor on paper, 2009)

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Barge Canal, November

Having found
Love in the loomings
Of blue, layered
Mountains

Having tasted
Freshness and renewal
In the ecstatic gray waters of
Now, November

I stand amazed
Where silver
Sunlight finds
Wavetops, then seeks,
Going deeper,
The sounded bottom:
Ledge and sand and
Ripples, unseen,
Of energy—

But felt in my own
Moving waters.

Sedges holding secrets,
Today the Barge Canal
Smells like split pine and
Bleeding poplar.

Across, on the other shore,
Birch leaves glow with
Yellow-gold
resonance, holding on,

For now

in wind across water.

-Kevin Macneil Brown