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Prussian Blue

Chapter 18: High Frequency Draw
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About This Book

A sequence of poems moves between wooded landscapes, fragments of domestic and roadside life, and surreal images, with recurring motifs of animals, weather, found objects, dolls, memory, mortality, and late-night observation. The poems shift from contemplative to unsettled, using dense, image-driven lines and abrupt juxtapositions to evoke physical detail and emotional residue. Short lyric vignettes and longer narrative sketches alternate, often anchored by sensory detail—light on water, scent of berries, rusted storefronts—and by questions about the passing of time and the persistence of small, uncanny presences.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Prussian Blue

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Title: Prussian Blue

Author: Paul Cameron Brown

Release date: March 5, 2010 [eBook #31514]
Most recently updated: April 19, 2010

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Sorour Imani

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRUSSIAN BLUE ***

Prussian Blue

By

Paul Cameron Brown





Contents

7 Not So Much
8 Serpentine
9 Lithuanian Dolls/Consulate Front
10 Begin And Beguile
11 Fire Bush
12 Skootematta
13 Animals And The Stars
14 And Then Some
15 Woodsy Backwoods Poem
16 Corner Store Fifties Reveille
17 Trout Lake Hotel
18 Northwoods Poem
19 Orange Lichens
20 Six Owlets
21 Twillingate
22 Bravura
23 Whisky Girl
24 High Frequency Draw (High Alert)
25 Red Fox (Red Horse Lake)
26 When I was a Much Younger Man




















When I was a Much Younger Man

When I was a much younger man,
my spiritual homeland was a scrub-mile of bush with thicket
leaves the size of your palms.

Saucer-size holes of white air enveloped the edge of trees
and the sky was large, an upturned pitcher
placed upon its ears...
edge-wise cicadas & June Beetles let out long throbs
and the people rounded out lives between the farmhouse & the barn.
This ennobled them and they were famously resilient and, in turn,
redolent with firmness & the gladness of life.

There was a Drive House, a pig pen, sheds & a chicken coop and, by
night, stars became the earlier evening swallows gulping the space Left in
the train of the moon. There was no one Empress of the Night anymore
than a Prince or Kings towered across the landscape.
Stillness and the largeness of things, predominated, and a hill cascading
between the fields & pond held both largess and chaos in nature.

A fence line divided the dynasties, then Regencies across an orchard
& what seemed to many an enchanted bridge to the woods.

It was here a boy made his stand.

The language of rock/hillside/lakes & nettle stands like the back of my hand
to fill a calendar wall, their musical sounds are brave arias in waves
with sonatas first in strength, then pleasure.

This Frontenac Axis as fortress, strong-hold, its booty lichens, moss,
legends such as Meyer's Cave, John Meyers murdered for silver,
Mazinaw Rock, the Mugwumps
more water in this Davy Jones locker than all Araby,
this wonder & merriment all strung in a violin string
as webs of beads these lakes
silver cistern,
lovely listening,
this necklace of forest wreath,
placid leaf fingering wide-eyed watershed rich in Massasauga serpents
like daggers in that tarn, karst topography lime-stone carapace
Painted Turtle hemorrhaging as orange leaves in Sumac troves,
copses as sky counts, lakes like the back of my hand ache with the wish
I could swim them all, wallow in their own restless energy.
Snapping Turtle Point, a pail of water and a beast three bucket sizes
with a yellow underbelly like an alligator, claws, black raven mouth
lunging his neck as some gladiator's sword primitive in his ferocity.
Nigh near lacerated my hand, no wish, here, to leave digits there as new
Finger Lakes.

Names masculine to the touch and their roundness——Mississageon,
Buckshot could pepper a listener or blur in seconds turning effete,
Shabomeeka, Sharbot or learn likeness and leisure in the form of the
lute, Kashwakemak, sound brittle——Rogue's Hollow, Marlbank,
Lime Lake, the Claire River disappearing into a swamp & muskeg
where one maps out one's personal Mythology—
Napanee is and as Anthology.

[26]

The End