inspired by the painting “Winter (The Vicarage Garden Under Snow)” by Vincent Van Gogh and the piano composition “Winter Fields” by Kayleen Asbo
While he painted the world in browns and grays,
Vincent van Gogh did not yet know
of the throbbing vibrance that would someday
emerge from inside him. He did not yet know
how these somber scenes—like a man alone
shoveling the dim weight of winter—
would give way to an ecstasy of gold,
an elation of blue, rapturous green.
God, I am drawn to these grim, gritty paintings
with their muted schemes and tangled branches,
searching for notes of what will happen—
how he will travel to the warmth of Provence,
will come to share through thick stroke and bright hue
“the terrible passions of humanity.”
How he will give everything, everything to his art—
how his talent will grow as the world breaks his heart,
how he will change the way we see beauty,
how he will be wrestled by melancholy.
I imagine him sitting in the bleak Dutch cold,
painting the dreary, dissonant snow,
becoming the painter he’s destined to be,
living into the losses, the gifts he does not yet know.
Posts Tagged ‘snow’
Thinking of Vincent Painting “Winter”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ekphrasis, Kayleen Asbo, snow, time, Van Gogh on June 12, 2022| 5 Comments »
Clean Slate
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, language, snow, weather on January 29, 2021| 2 Comments »
It’s almost always sunny just before
it snows—just before the sky turns grey
then meets the earth in giant swaths
of blue turned clouds turned snow turned drift,
and haven’t you sometimes wanted
to do that, too—to shift in an instant
from warm to cool, from blue to gray,
to know yourself as the opposite
of what you are, just as a day does,
an entirely new syntax unspooling
in swirling verbs and whirling predicates
so complex you forget who the subject is—
haven’t you wanted to flurry, to blizzard,
to white out until there were no tracks
like sentences left for you to follow?
One in the Woods
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aspen, shadow, snow, song, winter on January 3, 2021| 2 Comments »
Concurrent
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, nature, praise, snow, wound on December 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »
On a morning
when the snow
falls and drapes
everything in shine,
it is not that I don’t
feel the wounds—
raw and throbbing—
it’s just that it’s
so beautiful,
this tender world,
that I want
to praise it
forever.
The Snow People, Three Days Later
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged praise, snow, snowmen on November 30, 2020| 2 Comments »
Their hats are cockamamie.
One has lost its carrot nose.
Stone buttons and eyes
have long since succumbed
to gravity. But there is
something yet dignified
about the snow people in the yard,
their knobby stick arms raised
as if, in their declining state,
there’s still so much to praise.
Clear Instruction
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, purity, snow, thirst, water on October 26, 2020| 2 Comments »
Tonight my daughter
closes her fist
around the first snow
squeezes to make it
into a small cold ball
the shape of her hand,
and then offers it to me.
It tastes like sky,
like electric charge,
like winter, like childhood,
like curiosity.
And once again
I’m a girl who walks
to the neighbor’s yard
for a drink at the well—
I pump the heavy lever
and it draws clean, clear water
from the ground.
There’s a red metal ladle
hanging from a nail
on a nearby tree,
and the water tastes of moss
and rust and freedom.
There is a thirst
that’s been bequeathed us—
a thirst for what is
untreated and pure,
a thirst I somehow
manage to forget.
If it could speak,
the thirst might say,
Remember, remember,
remember.
Second Chance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, play, snow on February 16, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Next time the boy
throws the snow
at my face,
please let me see
an invitation
to play,
though it’s cold,
surprising,
his eyes bright requests.
One Simultaneous
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, snow, time on December 9, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Forty Years Later, The Snow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged earth, poem, poetry, snow, winter on December 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »
When we were nine, we’d build
elaborate cities of snow
in the fifteen minutes before
the wail of the recess bell.
The boys would outwait us,
and as soon as we’d run
toward the school, they’d
knock our snow realm to the ground.
What is it in us that loves
to create? To build worlds?
To imagine a life taking shape?
And what is it, equally human, that
thrills in seeing it all fall down?
This morning, without me
lifting a finger, the world
remade itself in snow—
everything softer now,
smoothed and linked,
a unified kingdom of sparkle,
crystal and shine.
And once again, I am nine,
the winter grand. And once again, I long
to protect it, this beautiful world,
want to give it my imagination, my hands.
A Small Bouquet from Grand Staircase-Escalante and Salida
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged desert, poem, poetry, snow, travel on October 28, 2019| 2 Comments »
Hi friends, I was off camping in the desert for a few days, then travelled to the glorious little town of Salida for a reading, and finally back home … here are a few small poems from the last few days …
hell’s backbone grill—
the mouth begins to thrill
from two-hundred ten miles away
*
in the slot canyon—
knowing myself as water
moving through these walls
*
wind storm in the desert—
even my thoughts
fill with sand
*
this revolving door—
certainty, uncertainty, certainty
uncertainty
*
she sweeps the leaves
from the walk—
red carpet in reverse
*
waking in a blizzard
while in my ears, my scalp
still red sand