poetry

It's Not That I'm Growing Older
by Brian Campbell

It's not that I'm growing older everything is getting younger round me the elderly have a fresh glow of youth the young—impossibly young

the crumbling buildings of my neighborhood are dressed for my own filmed narrative on antiquity all my dusty possessions, but lately soiled my yellowing pages, bronzed by a new dawn

soon I will enter aromatic earth sprouts will take root, ticklish green scents childish worms will burrow though my body infantile snails curl in my mouth

Brian Campbell is the author of Guatemala and Other Poems (Window Press, Toronto, 1994). His poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in the Antigonish Review, the New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, the Saranac Review, Contemporary Verse 2, nth position, and Umbrella. This is the second time he has appeared in carte blanche; he is also featured in Issue 6. Undressing the Night, his translation of selected poems of the Nicaraguan-Canadian poet Francisco Santos, was recently published by Editorial Lunes, Costa Rica. He lives and teaches in Montreal.