“Lake Scene With Figures” by Lee Evans

Franklin Dullin Briscoe, Lake Scene with Figures, n.d., oil on canvas. Gift of Ed and Susan Maier, 2014. Collection of the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College, founded as Randolph-Macon Woman’s College.

after Franklin Briscoe’s Lake Scene With Figures

Two figures in the foreground, turned away,
Ignore the scene behind them as they muse
Together, bent in friendship, or the news
Of some event sufficient to the day,
Or to the ages—who knows what they say,
Or don’t say? While behind them on the lake,
Those drifters on a raft float, as it seems,
Upon the upside-down sky, in a dream.
The fallen tree trunk where the two abide,
Just on the water’s edge, is counterpart
To that which drifts upon the glassy tide,
And bears their fellows. Like the landscape’s heart,
The crimson trees pause, breathless in suspense.
The mountains, like the clouds, are transient.

Lee Evans lives in Bath, Maine, and works for the local YMCA.