Blakelock’s Brook by Moonlight

The moon was Blacklock’s magic,

a pouring of bright light through a lattice

of branches and down upon

a scumbled flow of brook,
 

a broken shine of light on water.

His making was a layering of paint,

a scraping and re-layering, 

again and again and again.
 

Sometimes he’d pause 

to bang out wild piano tunes,

to drink to excess in the Bowery,

to trudge from one might-be buyer
 

to the next and the next and the next,

sometimes selling the paintings 

for a few dollars each, hoping 

the desperate hope—trying 
 

to feed his nine children and 

his beautiful, long-suffering wife.

No wonder then that Blakelock

collapsed, at last, into the craziness
 

that lurked around every corner 

of what was becoming New York City,

as he hawked his wares without success,

once tearing up the money
 

after a “patron” low-balled his offer 

for one his best paintings, 

one of those Blakelock had taken 

years to make and remake.
 

The enchantments of the best paintings

lived on after he was locked away

in a sanitarium and the prices for his works

went through the roofs of the rich,
 

commanding higher re-sale prices 

than the works of any other American artist—

while Blakelock’s family still starved

in a shack in the Catskill’s, 
 

and he lived out his last days 

under lock and key, painting on cigar-box lids

with whatever paints he could find,

struggling to keep rendering enchantments,
 

his moons still with that resplendent glow,

breaking through those traceries of branches,

his brooks still flowing, full of light,

towards places he could never go.