Learning to Paint
By D. A. Powell
Firstly to confess lack of nearly all perspective.
Eye sees things at the ends of stalks of the mind
planted in the dull fat head and facing forward.
Sees things flatly and lacks the way round.
Consider this a lesson in how to see.
As with a poem or a play, we start with a line.
Where does it go, how does it go, that line.
Early humans had four principal colors
for drawing, but why limit.
The important thing is light. See light
make light shape light bend it into spheres
as heaven’s hot bodies form in the void
take on the light. When the eye is dull
and deadening the round world flat again,
leave it slack and one feels the slackness vibrate.
Draw the reverberations inward and they’ll emit
a phosphorescence against the dark.
Losing sight again is part of the journey.
How else to see angels. Angels are made of twilight.
