Ancient Of Days

    It's Epsom but could pass for Epping,
    New Forest or Dumbarton Wood.

    There's ivy of the thickest
    English sort not commonly
    found in America; sprigs
    growing across open ground
    mantling it.

    Shiny to the eye, soft encircling
    the touch, I am reminded of blue waters,
    green grass Blake's Ancient of Days:
    an old man's beard stepping from the trees,
    Spanish Moss so unearthly it covers a
    southern forest.

    There are tendrils in herbal potions of unbroken lips that move
    across both dew and clover.

    I see Druids reciting psalms, weaving ivy along garlands
    of oak, the incantation set before a British lake -
    briar baskets carrying the trusting dead;
    food offerings transversing the waters.

    The ivy calls to mind all these things,
    just a sprig held tightly yet aromatic beyond imagining,
    my timorous English settlers seen thru a spate of leaves
    clutching their holly on Roanoke island.

Paul Cameron Brown

Paul Cameron Brown is a Canadian poet known for his extensive work in both poetry and art criticism. Born in western Canada, Brown has had a prolific career in writing, often intertwining themes of human experience and nature. His works have been showcased in various literary magazines and anthologies. With a style that is both reflective and evocative, he has gained recognition not only in Canada but also internationally.

Paul Cameron Brown

Juniper Trees

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Tank-Top

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

When Labouring To Break

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Chinatown-I

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

English

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A November Wood-Walk.

Dead leaves are deep in all our forest walks;
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There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale,
Which to this day stands single, in the midst
Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore:
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Two pretty rills do meet, and meeting make
Within one valley a large silver lake:
About whose banks the fertile mountains stood
In ages passèd bravely crowned with wood,
Which lending cold-sweet shadows gave it grace
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And from her father Neptune's brackish court,
Fair Thetis thither often would resort,
Attended by the fishes of the sea,
Which in those sweeter waters came to plea.
There would the daughter of the Sea God dive,
And thither came the Land Nymphs every eve
To wait upon her: bringing for her brows
Rich garlands of sweet flowers and beechy boughs.
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The Country Beautiful

I love the little daisies on the lawn
Which contemplate with wide and placid eyes
The blue and white enamel of the skies -
The larks which sing their mattin-song at dawn,
High o'er the earth, and see the new Day born,
All stained with amethyst and amber dyes.
I love the shadowy woodland's hidden prize
Of fragrant violets, which the dewy morn

Doth open gently underneath the trees
To cast elusive perfume on each hour -
The waving clover, full of drowsy bees,
That take their murmurous way from flower to flower.
Who could but think - deep in some sun-flecked glade -
How God must love these things that He has made?

Eastchurch, 1916.

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Shamrock

    Is there anything prettier than that -
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    toward the hook & vine
    of cathedral leaps,
    the vaults & crypts
    as go-betweens of an earthy worship,
    the supine female form?

    By quiet pools,
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    with red berry behind its eye,
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    with leaves as
    passionate culprits
    kissing dark.

    Clasped hands
    upward lies the sky
    my masterpiece angel,
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Oracabessa

    An iron wrought gate of turpentine force conveys little pigment,
    almost black parchment letters mindful of
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    elephantine water runs nettle sand to their granite perch.
    The broiling heat in this part of the Indies one knows must,
    posthaste, carry to the humus and flies any modicum of human remains.
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    memory drawn, any record of the little parish's dead flimsy
    in the topsy context of soil and undulant peat.

    A greened isle stares past the feckless scene, past again an
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Paul Cameron Brown