PAINTING THE MOUNTAIN BLACK

 by Jimmy Warner  

The forest gives off a sign of its blue-black moisture,

Branches of rain soaked autumn, rave of every color 

Leaves I try to capture, spent emotion when they fall.

The painting is inescapable, a spontaneous isolation.

Washing the backside of the peak, brush color goes

Between blue moods and black, another insurrection

Of fall scenes, aware that true evening drifts down

As one leaf of dark, a scatter of sparks the night lets

Fly away as the mountain sleeps, high pine ridge of

Vertebrae heaving against the moon’s heavy clouds.

 

Painting the mountain black I urge bamboo brushes

To narrate, tongue the certain notes I can’t caress in

My own song, giving a moist feeling only tears touch 

When no vision rises from a steep negative side

As the rush of its cold down draft ends the empty ink

And mindless sunlight gone back to its natural state.

Leaves shake and trickle water before I begin again,

Before I dip in clear black, the water itself essential,

I drown by an idea, the endless instinct and sparkle

Of deep wet-earth, loam plentiful, brain-like interior.

 

I must find its brush of death on porous paper stock

A dry broom’s poetic dictation, sweeping forest dust,

The ground padding itself before acorn fixtures fall.

Gray sticks and whistles, winter birds rush the spilled

Season’s dead terracotta shards, where I can’t give

Enough ink to these subtleties, primal inscape shade 

More than a depth-instinctive, blue-bottle lays to rest.

Every echo I turn away, roast shell I refuse to crack,

I paint a backward glance like a signature I link to

my Infatuation with mystery, its rain worm radiance.

 

The forest gives back sure signs of lost dampness,

Branches wave off  the very color I suppose I see,

Try to capture, spend too much emotion following.

The mountain will always be here when I come back

No new earth exposed, only a rendering darker

Than I can gloss with sky-blurred bottle brilliance,

Confetti crowded color merged to mauve still vapors,

Stained boot polish brown rubs, receding varnishes,

Bands of darkening dots, the last light of old brushes,

Its blank paper I left to God’s chance and my peace.  

 

©Jimmy Warner, 2002