Across April

LAKE CHAMPLAIN APRIL II, I
Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor on paper, 2010

----------------------------------------------------

A whole day
in one place:

the edge of
red quartzite
cliffs,

and from here
I can watch
the changing weather
coming for miles.


There it is!
A thin bright line,
slow-moving, silver
across the broad lake, the
flint-hard, sky-flecked waves.


-Kevin Macneil Brown
April, 2010

From Oakledge, April

FROM OAKLEDGE - Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,

watercolor on paper, 2010

-----------------------------------------------------------

April, and darkness falls at Oakledge.

And out across the water of sky, the sky of water, one last
glint of daylight finds the island,
then is taken in to the heart of dark spruce and shadowed pine.

It’s these vibrations and striations
in time and light that
I live for here at the lakeshore.

For instance, right now,
when lost soundings in fathoms return to memory,
and old bridge footings rise again.

As for me, like these ancient red rocks,
I only seem to be still.

And what first arrives as twilight quiet
is soon to come alive

with wing-beat, ripple, wave on shifting stone.

-Kevin Macneil Brown