Testimony

When snow falls, there lives
the shrill cries that
leaves are not alone.

Each flake, a mute testimony
not a leaf falls before
surgery prunes the individual tree.

Cold November after
brown and white conspire,
the forest leaves a bleeding crust,
scar tissue from natural wars.

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

The Garden

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Crying Scene

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Skootematta

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Pelée: May 8, 1902

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.

Presence Of Mind

    Spring heralds the summer with lilacs perched from that door.

    In snows, a swarm of bushes lie black and apparently rootless as the town's iron-gate bridge collapses under the centre part of the main road.

    Little enclaves of activity pass as stores, mere centrefolds across busy highway arteries this time of year.

    I am a grey fleck in my dark wool coat near the perimeter of a winding fence.

    The casual observer gives me half a chance to be seen in the deathless white, opaque coloured moonstone so still against the field's shores.

    A plaster river, her sides inserted with isle-dotted chunks, hands across a winter solstice tribal dance.

    Ostensibly, I poke the land from stylized limbo, a chalky substance disturbed with every movement's cough.

Paul Cameron Brown

Fortress Snow

The embankment lies as heavy
edges on our lives.
The shadows of the rock,
piled drifts huge monotony's ledge,
accumulations by the side of the tree
wear thin visages;
the breath of summer eclipsed.

Snow reigns supreme;
teeters about the rim
of the city's existence.
Pettiness of man's realm - pretty
foliage of the transient,
wrappings upon our lives
brittle near the storm.

The reply of the eternal,
fire on stone
blazons reality
the peaked remains
of snow streaked sun.

Immensity governs us;
clarity of the temporal
fire set by the staccato
of man's rhythm.

Paul Cameron Brown

The Spoken Word

I touch your
face - where strands of whispery hair
dangle your thoughtful gaze through mine.

Clutching,
all the words not said
lie pale and broken
beneath forgery lies.


Eyes, our facial minnows, the mirror
images, flash too brightly
out of the shallows,
out of their stony commitments
towards believing
we cannot agree.

Paul Cameron Brown

Sideway Look

    It's snowing and all I can think of
    are leaves to wrap your memory,
    leaves pungent as tea,
    green curls alive
    with the promise of fire,
    shutes like fingers
    to play a tap on your skin.

    The snow is wet like your eyes at parting,
    cold as the promise of a winter dawn
    wet again as city-streets
    I must tread to make a living,
    the flask of wine
    pressed to my lips.

    On the winter landscape all
    I see is the ghost white of sheets,
    our sheets wrapped to keep breath warm
    the log cannisters of our bed
    a heady raft upon which to travel
    to burn up an ocean of delight.

Paul Cameron Brown

Smears

A snowy morning
unfolding
I smear my eyes
the crimson details
from my life.

Paul Cameron Brown

Magpie Tongues

    Trillium breath, an ounce
    of feathered growth unravels
    in the cloves of the silent forest.
    The rain is heavy with the stamp
    of perfumed trees realizing
    slight restraint on bursting seed.

    Cloaked in fragrance, tufts
    of mossy step kiss the opening earth,
    a basement horizon presumes
    the darling test of flower
    across dale & rustling nook,
    then undresses moist greenery
    with sumptuous eye.

    The last is hardest -
    cat crimson, a fire weed sunset lotion,
    the rain erased away;
    nobody special harangues the leaves
    but birds steal in quietly with
    tenderness clothed of verdure
    to pinch a leafy oasis about
    their forest haunt.

Paul Cameron Brown