© 2015 by Allan Brown

Allan Brown was born and raised in Victoria, BC, and presently lives in Powell River. His poems have been published in various Canadian and American forums since 1962 and are partly collected in twenty-three books and chapbooks. He is a member of the Federation of BC Writers and Haiku Canada.

Leaf Press published his book Before the Dark in 2014. The poem "Portrait" was previously published in Quarry.

Portrait

Somehow these colours
have softened rather than made sharper
his quiet skull, the lines of bone
that you'd have thought to show
in a parody of cheeks and eye-sockets,
hard black shadows caught
in the contrasts of Alexandrian sunlight.

But the image is occupied
with flesh, the eyes are moist,
the mouth speaks its own name:

"I am Artemidorus
the Daldian; I have been waiting."

Note:

"Portrait" is a description of an imaginary portrait of Artemidorus (2nd century CE), a scholar who specialized in the interpretation of dreams.