Photo: Pat Brown Allan Brown lives in Powell River. His poems have appeared (patiently) across Canada since 1962. His fifteenth collection, Imagines (Leaf Press), was co-winner of the bp nichol Chapbook Award for 2002. Poem © Allan Brown

Monday's Poem Second Beach, Vancouver I have an irrelevant memory of 2nd beach, how shadows again in their shaping if now the strange years; and a kind of what chased them over the dark skyline into their pause and only the minutes of who once known;                           and the damp grass passing of your slim feet; and the careful moonlight still; rough green bushes near the water's edge.

Poetry involves the interface of image(s), an idea, and a form. And often some patience as well. One day in August of 1977, when I was living some 3,000 miles away from Vancouver, a few images from there — a skyline, grass, feet, etc. — came unexpectedly and persistently to mind, along with the conviction that they were both accidental and necessary. Obviously a poem was happening. But I couldn't quite get/find the apt form for it, so I committed a draft to my notebook and waited. And waited and drafted from time to time for a bit over 25 years, till November, 2002, when without any particular effort I found/got the form that (I think) I'd been waiting for. At least, I hope it is.