Man Painting An Alviso Barn Collapse - Dustin Vado
“It’s a rare day that I get a good one… a rare day indeed.“
----wind----
frustrated brush jabs paper
“But there’s no use getting anxious about it… it’s just the way it goes.”
His small pick-up had a flat tire
but he still wanted to finish painting.
The sky was clear, the ducks were landing
in the murky Alviso water
but his attention was on a collapsed barn
that he said was historic.
Its history doesn't seem to matter now
in the garden of ever sprouting cement,
splintered wood cowering at the sky
forgotten in plain sight.
In ‘59, he took his first watercolor class,
then joined the army and drank in Germany.
They didn't call it partying back then,
he scoffed when I said it.
After three wives and a career in carpentry,
he seeks out road sides to paint
or maybe just stumbles on rotting
landmarks with an eye for preservation.
Old fashioned
Smooth leather skin
Partially deaf
“Eh?!?”
I repeat myself
“Eh?!?”
I repeat myself
And he said that Pynchon
mistook mysticism for art.
“Mysticism doesn't belong in art?”
“Eh?!?”
My words trail off in the slough breezes
and he changes the subject with the paint water.
Looking, dabbing,
feigning that I am not interrupting him
gathering evidence of a forgotten story
hidden in decay.
He will run out of roadsides
in Santa Cruz, Alviso, and Coyote Valley
refusing to paint vineyards bought by yuppies,
painting instead the graves
remembered only in water color.
----wind----
frustrated brush jabs paper
“But there’s no use getting anxious about it… it’s just the way it goes.”
His small pick-up had a flat tire
but he still wanted to finish painting.
The sky was clear, the ducks were landing
in the murky Alviso water
but his attention was on a collapsed barn
that he said was historic.
Its history doesn't seem to matter now
in the garden of ever sprouting cement,
splintered wood cowering at the sky
forgotten in plain sight.
In ‘59, he took his first watercolor class,
then joined the army and drank in Germany.
They didn't call it partying back then,
he scoffed when I said it.
After three wives and a career in carpentry,
he seeks out road sides to paint
or maybe just stumbles on rotting
landmarks with an eye for preservation.
Old fashioned
Smooth leather skin
Partially deaf
“Eh?!?”
I repeat myself
“Eh?!?”
I repeat myself
And he said that Pynchon
mistook mysticism for art.
“Mysticism doesn't belong in art?”
“Eh?!?”
My words trail off in the slough breezes
and he changes the subject with the paint water.
Looking, dabbing,
feigning that I am not interrupting him
gathering evidence of a forgotten story
hidden in decay.
He will run out of roadsides
in Santa Cruz, Alviso, and Coyote Valley
refusing to paint vineyards bought by yuppies,
painting instead the graves
remembered only in water color.
