Van Gogh

© Margaret Wesseling

 What he knew from the beginning

was that the sun existed

and without the sun, nothing else.

Things could get confused in a storm:

clouds walking down the fields,

ditch mud backed up through turf.

He drew the forms light shows you:

a naked woman—a candlestick.

Then he saw he needed more.

He needed light's hand, needed color's

touch. He walked south. But the

sunflower fists turned green after all

with envy. He died

unable to paint the hand that drew him.