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FIRST LESSON

There is nothing more artistic than to love others.

VINCENT VAN GOGH

SUNFLOWERS

Oil on Canvas, 1888

VINCENT VAN GOGH

In 5^th grade, the teacher handed out a brochure from which to order prints of the classics for 99 cents. My mother ordered several, among them your Sunflowers, perhaps why we have these conversations.

Even in the print, the impasto was quite evident.

Though just 11 years old, I thought the vase

of the half way dying giants a bit peculiar, almost scary

like the tangling monsters in bad dreams.

But their floppy, golden heads made her happy,

and it made me happy to dutifully carry home

a new print every month in its tubular container

that we opened together on the kitchen table.

You painted them for Gauguin, who never made you happy,

but the Sunflowers must have spoken to you of a life free of torment, one of complete elation, a life where yellow holds the brush and the eyes of life and death are equal in their beauty.

And Gauguin painted you painting them

as though the two of you followed in a circle

those nine autumn weeks in and out

of the yellow house in Arles

until the tragic took the canvas over.

I remember them in the living room

in their great oak frame she bought at the Salvation Army,

then again in the kitchen, and then again in the hall,

over her bed, and then back again to the living room.

Oh, she moved your flowers around so much,

and all I did was follow them around and her.

ACHILLES HEEL

Even if your mother,

sea nymph

with special powers,

lowers you slowly

hanging on

to your bitty heel

then dips you in

to a magical river,

you will never be

immortal.

Even when she finds

she forgot to soak

the heel she held you by,

your vulnerability

will follow,

your weaknesses inevitable.

Though for now, it’s just

that one spot, tiny place

blazing out as a beam

to a world wild with torment,

even if she tries

to burn away the parts

that leave you open.

THE GREAT BLUE HERON

I love the great blue heron

who nests on my pond.

I love his stress

when red-winged black birds

peck at his head with retribution

for his thievery of eggs.

I love how he stands up and

takes it all,

the swirling wings

of tiny payback and I love, oh I love…

I love how the day exists beneath his wings

and even more

how they unfold: feather to muscle to bone

to flight and to somehow

I matter not in any of it.

STORM

The wolf howls a blue moon

and throws it to the sky

like the last of Van Gogh’s

invading strokes of orange.

The final wails of the dying

can release the colors too.

Phone rings at 3:00 a.m.

What is real the receiver

does not know by heart.

This is for the mentally ill

the wild colors of their minds

the deep and lonesome country

friends and family wander.

TO KNOW A SNOW ANGEL

Is to love

what will wash away

with the wind

and drifted days.

Her wings will fade

so gently

into the blanched sky.

Deer might come to see

what has dissolved.

There are no lights

on a distant tree,

no sleigh bells,

no ringing of anything

anywhere.

THEORY ON COLOR

When we placed our mother

in the snow to rest

we dressed her in a purple sweater

for fear she would be chilled.

Our father stood behind

and gasped my wife.

That was 20 years ago.

Time has come and gone.

Some days have stayed too long

others gone too fast.

Her only sister still wears red,

though I never see her. News is

she takes classes at a local college,

but even that was years ago.

Two weeks before my mother died,

she lent me money for a coat.

She left with me in debt to her.

Of course that’s how it went.

I tried to pay my father back

but he would not receive it.

Here, in fact, it’s red, not green that lives.

And purple sings from silent snow.

ALMS

Dawning on her

that it wasn’t a public mass,

the homeless woman, sweet and slow of mind,

slipped out as unobtrusively

as she had slipped in

to sit at the front row of the Assumption Church,

closer to the altar than any of the family.

Between the homily and the eulogy,

she floated back in

and placed

a package of powdered donuts

on the pedestal

next to the urn

of my father’s ashes.

Next to the man

who loved his pastries.

Beside the man

who always said I’ll make it up to you … Near the man who never held his head too high.

Beside the man

whose mother

widowed, poor,

then finally drunk,

gave food to those with even less,

to me,

pennies off her dresser.

THE SCATTERING OF ASHES

For A

I am every cool breeze

and bite on the lake

when the fish follow

and the water reads your mind.

I am the tree of resolution

against a gray November sky.

I am the heart of the fleeting deer.

I follow the rolling hills at dusk

to the little fork in the road

where I’ll find you in your dreams.

AFRAID TO SLEEP AND THEN AFRAID TO WAKE

Alone after the death of two fathers

That you might not open the morning first

or tighten the lid to the day.

Accustomed to you and feeling

in-comprehensible, though I know

if you were here, you would understand.

Innocent sounds enter the house and become