TOM Bryan was born in Winnipeg, Canada.
His vividly described images of childhood include a sad echo of the First World War. The poet now lives in the Scottish Borders. This piece comes from his latest collection, Until The Roof Falls In (Indigo Dreams Publishing, £6.99).
THE COUNTRY I COME FROM
had brindled garter snakes
freight train steam
dimes flattened on railway tracks
a rusting 1936 Studebaker Sedan for a playground
three dappled Indian ponies never saddled
stone axes from before the white men came
dark homesick Welshmen
punting rugby balls into my grandfather's vegetables
hailstones like golf balls
skating on sloughs in minus twenty Fahrenheit
tine of chaw tobacco
And men from the First Great War
coughing still, marching
stoop-shouldered
down red brick streets
every year
until none were left
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