Watercolour Sketch

Watercolour sketch? No, not really. It's a poem, a sketch surely, but then of course, a watercolour sketch, why not? It's what I meant when I wrote it so long ago, and it's what I mean now.

Watercolour Sketch: An Autumn Day on Lac La Peche

Our red canoe slices the water
like an arrow splicing air
its colour echoing the squadrons
of leaves tumbling to the lake
as the maples surrounding this place
repeat old patterns - bleeding fall.

A far-off mist rises over the hills
and the lake is a slate mirroring the
surrounding shore, the islands populated
with maple, alder and ash splendid in
chartreuses and crimson. Not a breeze
to freshen the water which breathes a

torrid fishy presence encouraging the
seagulls squawking and screeching at our
intrusion - climbing stray breezes or
themselves like white canoes bobbing in
the lake. Although the water appears to
swell beneath us the level is low and

waterweeds skirl under our paddles
churning sand. Rocks of the Canadian Shield
protrude on the shoreline, in the water,
painted like flags by the guano of years'
roosts. A brace of Mergansers watch
unblinkingly as our canoe nudges their rock
then lift in a panic of wings beating air.

Fish-hunting kingfishers splat the lake
from the shore's edge and a surfacing/
submerging loon ripples the water as we
skirt shoreline and island outcropping.
The perfect line of the water bisects a
double world of glorious colour and we

cannot discern which one is real; the one
we inhabit or the symmetrical other-half;
a faithful reflection and truly obverse
yet as real as the other. In that double
world is twinned beauty with beauty

objects become other than what they are
and we, like insects, skim the surface
middling this strange new otherworld.

1980