Читать книгу Doubtful Harbor - Idris Anderson - Страница 10

Painting the Bathroom

I’m getting the hang of it, drawing the line

without level or square, green next to white,

blue next to green. Edge the crown, the corners.

Brush and caulk freehand, without blue tape.

In his splotchy white overalls, the professional painter

told his secrets: keep your brush loaded,

lay it on, keep it wet, one or two strokes, that’s it.

Given time, given space. Easier said than done.

Altogether elsewhere, north, in a house by the sea,

the landscape’s all circles and arcs. No, to be exact,

it’s inexact squiggles—tangles, and unexpected

headland hills undulating, a shore of irregular

marshes and marsh flats, blurry margins all around

in six rectangular windows, a sheen on the water.

I learned to paint by numbers, two Pomeranians,

eight plastic rounds of oily colors. In the beginning,

it was nothing but faint blue lines on cardboard,

obsessive hairy streaks of white and tan.

One thing, I discovered, could become another.

Now it’s all Rothko and Benjamin Moore, soft

but definitive box squares of Cloud White,

Tapestry Beige (a kind of fresh light celery),

Hale Navy on the vanity with the white knobs.

Colors of matter gathered from the landscape.

Earth, pollen, weed tucked into an apron,

ground, boiled, mixed in a mud hut.

Pots and walls colored with the potions.

First cause of all beauty beyond knowing.

Slow day here. Fog settled in. What I thought

was a marsh hawk is, closer, a vulture, wheeling

and tilting. Nothing’s dead yet. Tiny people,

a couple? a father and daughter? are walking the spit.

Their dog off leash runs ahead, waits for the humans,

who ignore him. They must be talking. He runs again.

It’s too soon for the kitesurfers I saw yesterday,

four of them under power-red curves catching good air.

I’ve become a contemplative, of textures, of what

I can feel between finger and thumb, of what happens

that is not balance or clarity, that comes not from

knowledge or training, that is at the edges of mystery

where light is changed and water tidal, where dark

green jags of cypresses mass along Bodega Bay.