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When I Was A Much Younger Man
By Paul Cameron Brown
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.
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