Tuesday poem #497 : Phillip Crymble : Last of the Colour

——— for your grandfather

           It’s cold in late November, not at all the kind of weather,
                    no, not at all how I remember

meeting him. Plant lice on his prize tomatoes. Those lost
           and leafless trees he painted —

           woodland cedars, birches, maples — every one a dream
                     he dreamed of fire depleted. 

Washed-out whites, a field of green, the palette-knife
                              to bring relief to earth tones. 

           And the trees in blackened aubergine — their branches
                     nerve-end arteries flash-frozen —

           windfall limbs and leaves — persimmon mixed
with orange peel. It’s summer

           in my memory — tent-caterpillars in the trees — out back
                              the blowtorch whispering.

 

 

 

Phillip Crymble is a physically disabled poet from Belfast now living in Atlantic Canada. A poetry editor at The Fiddlehead, he received his MFA from the University of Michigan and has poems either published or forthcoming in The Irish Times, The Walrus, The London Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, The Literary Review of Canada, The Forward Book of Poetry, and elsewhere. 

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan