Presence Of Mind
By Paul Cameron Brown
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.
And if I were to fall, lie down, and cry, the agonized winter's frantic sun would bury me with shadows, give forth dark branches to my freedom.
In the growing dark, I ponder white and infinity.
The hectic pace of the distant highway absorbs less and less my hope.
In private cold, my face burns a tallow white, toes flake in frostbite or erode every sensation.
Stars in the dark canopy above are cryptic mourners and people frigid sorrow.
Black is my colour as I ebb steadily toward their heights.
By morning, when the first wisp of straw or dry leaf catches light near this stringent fence, an occasional passerby with the presence of mind shall comment how lifeless fields are in the clutch of brittle snow.