Rowing With Crayons

I see children rowing with crayons
across a park lagoon.

They are sagging,
they have just killed a blackbird playing:

the lot of you,
scribbling to school.

Later on, I retrieved
the pieces of paper, ink covered, from a field.

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

Wild Card

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Triangular Trade

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

The Potato Eaters

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Woodsy Backwoods Poem

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Rouge And Gray

So much time has passed
& time is a hooligan run wild
littering the streets,
squeezing toothpaste at the wrong end
shredding clothes with a razor blade.

Time is never called into account    -
lives like Peter Pan
in a flying abode above it all
scot-free, the surly bandit.

A perilous acquisition    -
tiny pinpricks above the eye-brows
crows' feet
-    all too visible rending of
fleshy corners bulbed
to puffiness.

Red-handed,
I caught time
his knife in Youth once more
still-water decay,
brackish trouble-maker
with tint of rouge and gray.

This school-yard tough
still picking on the corner weakling.
braggadocio and upstart
spoiling for a fight
first elbow up,
each foot in a fray.

Paul Cameron Brown

Fence Line

That Captain Kidd scribbling of rock in the fields
yellowed bristle of pages
back of a farm where
piratical breaking of land knocks
clean holes in the soil,
gypsy dancers vernal growth before
a spy-glass hour moon.

And black print smudged
on a thumb, a child's glossary of tales
thick with terror
before the faceless wretch
crawls for grog,
his peg-leg
in step with
one part of my brain
Old Phew hardly
any Smee from Peter Pan
but the holocaust    -
the raven in the tree
eyeing the baby Treasure Island,
that fledgling reason
butchering both nostrils
at the skunk cabbage whose nectar
is the prize of cemeteries
& wild reunion of the bees.

Paul Cameron Brown

Pencil Sketches

Staying home,
I caught naughty elves
watering my piano,
growling inside my head.

Faucet drops
beating out in harmony a drum tatoo
to the tune of a plugged drain,
the careless postures of indifference
retold lives lived on spindle shanks
caught on the obligatory
insipid train
of obliging a pantry full
of ones you love.

Paul Cameron Brown

Mail Drop

    A boat sits on the very shallows
    of a lake
    in egg-cup fashion,
    a tea-cosy covering waves,
    orchestrating the bob of colours
    in white enamel blue
    inverted water.

    Afar, the boat is a rasher of bacon
    a strip, stripling, stipend
    slicing the lake,
    distancing.

    The boat is an envelope
    at the end of the world,
    planet-sized, pea-green
    about to spin crazily
    into the sun at the
    end of a rifle-sized
    mail drop.

    The boat rides amid the
    between places of things,
    furtive longings
    where crones sit within
    waiting bushes &
    lizards visit skin,
    dirge of teeth gnashing
    the fringe canopy of
    flowing leaves.

Paul Cameron Brown

Bloodcount

My mind had almost died.

It had refused a game of tag on a common
with surly children and they steadfastly took revenge.

My fate like Blondin's walk across Niagara
saw cataracts looming large,
hiss & foam,
then visions of serpents,
farawy monsters &
inner tension of rocks opening.

The churned, brown water opened like a basket before me.
Maurading bubbles took on elephantine shapes,
my barrel creeked.
Faraway, the edge & drop yawned in indifferent harmony.
The brown walls of my fortress barrel became like palates
& sutures of my skull imprisoning the brain;
the trickle of invading water ever a reminder.

The close of the story?
Nothing. What is there to record after a river passes?
What remains of things unseen, ...

Paul Cameron Brown

Casting Rocks

    Merely on edge,
    the wharf in bad light
    clinging to water's ledge -
    a loon from afar
    the Woods
    closing with each sound.

    Casting rocks toward moon's glare
    lapidations laughing back,
    the treacle of warm night
    coaxing fire's glowing might.

    Sudden, oceanic wilderness
    breathless in barked silence -
    and camphor to keep the flies at distance,
    the anchored boat like a prison ship
    dallying on the waves,
    brambles & underbrush
    sunken wet sand,
    abundant berries rasp in thickets -
    the cottage like a jar
    closing for the night.

Paul Cameron Brown