Leaves
in cascading falls…
within
each fleshy pad of leaf
palisades of moist green silos
emerald balloons
full to bursting
ooze of vascular bundles
in their sheaths.
Within me
trillions
of respiring chambers pulse
of plasma through the vessels’ reel
enough to encircle twice
the globe
if parsed parted laid end to end.
Vapour
from grape-blue bronchial sacs
forced on gusts from contracted lungs
drifts
over jade expanses
settles
into open-lipped
pores
is osmosed
through membranes
imbibed
into cytoplasm.
Each vacuole
a green
fulmination
each corpuscle
a great red giant
flaming
in its
firmament
“Plants on My Writing Table” will appear in Brian Campbell’s forthcoming collection, Shimmer Report (Ekstasis Editions, 2015). Previous collections include Passenger Flight, Guatamala and Other Poems, as well as, most recently, A Private Collection, a chapbook of ekphrastic poetry and photographs of artwork. Published widely, his poetry has appeared previously in carte blanche. Originally from Toronto, Campbell currently lives in Montreal.