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(From the Cove, Lake Champlain,
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2010 )
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From the Cove, Lake Champlain
From the Cove, Lake Champlain
My father left
this cove in,
what was it,
1833?
Now I’m here again,
three decades on,
this cove in,
what was it,
1833?
Now I’m here again,
three decades on,
seeing the lake through his eyes:
Water always
in motion;
though also, at times,
becalmed.
He had spoken more than
once of season’s changing,
bringing a rain of
birds across the
sky and on the water.
He had also said to me:
“Look at all
that deep blue lake;
those distant ghost-grey mountains today;
the dark green forest sharp to the sky --
but sweet silver shallows
at home here
at the cove…”
This was the place
he always
struck out from,
every morning,
year after year.
As I write these words
a fish-hawk swoops,
hits the water hard,
rises
with gleam of
catch in talons.
So, something
still here
of my father, then,
meeting my return.
-Kevin Macneil Brown
Water always
in motion;
though also, at times,
becalmed.
He had spoken more than
once of season’s changing,
bringing a rain of
birds across the
sky and on the water.
He had also said to me:
“Look at all
that deep blue lake;
those distant ghost-grey mountains today;
the dark green forest sharp to the sky --
but sweet silver shallows
at home here
at the cove…”
This was the place
he always
struck out from,
every morning,
year after year.
As I write these words
a fish-hawk swoops,
hits the water hard,
rises
with gleam of
catch in talons.
So, something
still here
of my father, then,
meeting my return.
-Kevin Macneil Brown
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Among the many resonances I experience in the presence of Lake Champlain are those that vibrate with a sense of the past. When I finished the painting above in April, I knew there was a story that went with it, but I was not sure exactly what it was. I did have a sense that there was something sort of 19th century about the image.
Among the many resonances I experience in the presence of Lake Champlain are those that vibrate with a sense of the past. When I finished the painting above in April, I knew there was a story that went with it, but I was not sure exactly what it was. I did have a sense that there was something sort of 19th century about the image.
I returned to the lake shore along Burlington Bay recently for a day of walking, thinking, sketching--experiencing the lake and its horizons as fully as I could. I was riding the bus home when the poem arrived, and I got the first draft down, knowing that I'd found the story to go with the painting.
