UNCLE MILLARD AND THE DARKNESS

What color would you lay down first?
Uncle Millard, the black sheep of the family
The drunk, the brilliant mind, the wasted life
A streak of cruel
Masquerading as absurdity
The drink, always the drink
And a degree in commercial art

Never dangerous or cruel to me
He had no friends
And I loved him
For his dangerous absurdity
His friendless austerity
Because he saw me as a person
Not a child
And for his art

It was not so much in his works
They were scant
But in the way he saw things
(Including, of course, me)
And the way he talked of things
As if we were equals
As if I understood

On a rare visit we stood on his porch
And drank in the suburban night
Redolent with city noise
And pools and points of light
What color would you lay down first?
Around us was the dark, warm and embracing
Black, I replied
Black because it is night
He smiled his Uncle Millard smile at me
And called me Muscles For Brains
A loving term dripping with absurdity
Yellow, he said, you would lay down yellow
Then we took a secret walk to his secret store
To buy more liquor

He never explained why the yellow
I never visited again
He moved on, down a darkening path
To his appointment with sadness
And a failing liver
I got his furniture and a photo
But never an explanation

Decades passed
Occasional flashes of that suburban night
Pricked with electric incandescence
Forgotten brush strokes, an empty bottle
Until one day a friend, an artist
Invited me to the garden to paint bright flowers
You lay down the background color first, she told me
Then apply the other colors over it

My flowers and trees that day were pathetic
I had never painted before
Or understood the quiet strength of underneath
Or Uncle Millard
Drowning in alcohol, crying in the night
With brush and form and thought
And the unknown song of his heart
He had told me the secret when I was a child
That we lay down the light
And cover it with darkness