Poetry, page 2
Visit with Van Gogh
I walk through broad strokes of sun,
wheat bent over, women carrying
bundled sheafs, trees dark
in the distance. At the edge
of the field, he sits, crumpled,
still, and filled with light. I sit
beside him, look out over the late
afternoon, over the stubbled fields,
the roughened skin of soil.
In his dark wild eyes,
for one moment, I see galaxies
colliding, shining cities of darkness
crumbling. His gaze returns
to his palette, to the field beyond
his work. I finger an obsidian chip,
feel the edge of its glassy smoothness,
the darkness of his implosion. A black hole
flowers at the center of his soul.
The bottom of my sleeve, the hem
of my dress, my hair blow toward him.
A great light radiates from his darkness,
illuminates the coming night.
Mary Stebbins
for my teachers, Pat, Janine, Linda, Vincent
(published in Montserat Review, see link in sidebar)
Pond in Fog, Hamlin GMA, Clay, NY
Photo by Mary Stebbins, February, 2005
available
Into the Current
of flowered Appalachians. You thrust me into the shapes
of krumholtz. Fairy forests at the edge of rock, trees twisted
into storm. Cougar on granite; eager feasting at the warm flesh
of a doe. We hid the wind, the sudden first warm day of April,
snow still in the shadows of the oaks. Heat drove us
from our cave onto the rocks above the precipice. We tumbled, plummeted
into the gorge. Colliding in air, we crashed to the water.
Into the current, over the falls, into the pool. A sudden mountain
pool. Lit by trilliums and bloodroot. Coo
of a mourning dove. The first white-throated sparrow sings. Flies from
under the sheets smack into the still-closed window.
Crumples, chest fluttering, to lie stunned on the bedroom floor.
Mary Stebbins
(this poem appears in the Feb/March issue of edificeWRECKED, see sidebar)
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