For Vincent (BTP #9)

 (Wheat Field and Cypresses - Vincent Van Gogh)

Over at http://www.bigtentpoetry.org , the prompt this week was to have a "conversation" with or about something important to you.  I have always wished that I could just sit with Vincent Van Gogh and watch him work, letting him know that what he was accomplishing was more powerful and revolutionary than he realized.  I would never presume that a genius of his caliber would answer my questions, so I did the piece in a slightly different way.

As I look upon your world

of twirling, swirling, dancing skies

created by such magic sight,

a land that only you could see.

I want to come inside that place

of saintly faces plowing earth,

as cypresses reach heavenward

with beseeching limbs unfurled.

Where did you find a palette pure,

That no one else had ever seen,

of greens and blues to make us weep

and golds to take our breath away?

Where sunflowers within a vase

scream of their captivity,

and crows escape to fairer lands,

outrunning their mortality.

How did it feel to be so trapped,

within this solitary life?

Dismissed by lesser, duller men,

convinced the world was only gray.

You had a voice they could not hear,

a language foreign to their ears.

A prophet no one hearkened to,

their hooded eyes could never see.

How I wish you could be born again

into this time of instant praise,

where here we celebrate the new,

And worship to your painted face.

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(Van Gogh's work has always seemed like like the most beautiful melodic poetry to me, but where the lines are moved around and the rhymes disjointed and haphazard - I tried to convey a bit of that while writing this piece.)