Kevin Miller: Swan Song

- after Tyge Ingerslev’s akvarel “Kolindsund 2011”

Watercolor is a controlled bleed,
its borders are edges feathered
in airy layers, brush, paint, paper
and the complex mastery of water.

Gradations of gray frame
swan ghosts gliding twice-white,
each a note composed as the train
crosses flat land to Århus Station,

winter 1990, Kolind is all pond
glass out the window the smooth
idle a mute ease trumpeting water’s
return, reclaiming reclaimed fields.

Today the disappeared lake’s
striations line like sheet music
pressed on a schoolhouse shade
drawn past return, what’s dun

was water pumped and drained,
what’s left is bottomland too wet
to farm, rushes at the deckle edge
recall the refrain of lake and swan.