Sunflowers

Verse on Van Gogh

Deep in this vase echo the tick-less tocks of a crippled clock, conjuring a pair of hands, a clasp, a thankless snatch, an ashen dawn of endless decay.

In the book of golden lores we are but the eyes of Eden, gouged and trodden, stolen off winds.

Out in the fields, in the world of virile light, where days lay in splinters of a grand shattered mistake, we spent ourselves slapping soft dust of long-dead stars on scrambling feet and tickling wings, getting drunk on mist at night.

There the air hummed with kiss-and-tells, a thousand wombs pounding shards of rays that ripped the earth from hill to sea.

Petal on petal we pieced up the great sweep of the wild, bronze-gold cheer of the clan when, on the day of sweltering breezes, a metallic grin parted and met, and sent us down this hollow huddle, foot-long and final.

We are all in it together, the young and the balding old, the brown of heart, the green of spine, the blind and the balmy.

Until we bow before the scythe of the setting moon we’ll hold up and keep in place a little warmth in our wilted sighs.

*A tribute to Sunflowers, the painting by Vincent van Gogh.