THE GATHERING OF DEAD WOOD
The gathering of dead wood
- driven, pinched in faces between
the strain of Van Gogh's setting -
had all the more realism
hastening down that leaden street.
Churning sockets, burdened with the duress of suffering,
the street in vigorous winter
raced like a bootblack
up from the river. Hedged by
black stems called trees, rows
of withered houses and dim bread shops
propositioned rough headlights
along a promenade of ice stalks
and careening streetlamps.
Fast in the cold,
faces were juggernauts
skating treacherously
over the pond of that closed city.
[62]
Paul Cameron Brown was born in London, England in 1948.
Moving to Canada, he grew up in Kingston before
attending high school in the southern community of Chatham.
He spent five years at University of Western
Ontario in London with summers interspersed between
work and travel. The early seventies saw trips to Europe,
the West and Mexico.
Currently teaching high school in Brampton, his poems
have appeared in Quarry, Nebula, Boreal, Northern
Journey, Stuffed Crocodile, Tightrope, as well as
a number of anthologies in the U.S.
"... one can instantly sense the private and resonant landscape
in the delicate nature... exciting water colour, a true painter of words."
Joe Rosenblatt
Three Trees Press