Of Cypresses
Vincent Van Gogh’s Cypresses
Jagged stone walls look as if ravaged by storms,
though the cypresses remain upright.
I must begin again to say what I see
and not use the rotted names.
By daylight, one could send a soul safely
out into fields where cypresses loom.
But why must I or how can I
when all the names reek of their rot?
If the cypresses form an argument, it is neither
petition nor prayer. They appear never to weep.
Then there’s the matter of all this chatter.
We all want a piece of you, Vincent.
Sentinels, they shoot upward in one painting,
swept into motion by the mistral.
What exactly is a mistral? What does it say
about me that I hear mistress and minstrel?
In another, they are barely but still there,
sequestered between farmhouse and mountain.
That last one’s rhetorical.
I very much know what it says about me.
Even the madding yellow moon, the shock-lit
stars in nocturne frame them.
At this juncture, how much of my life have I
not begged, borrowed, or stolen from art?
I know I have no real claim to these trees.
Yet they have exerted some claim on me.
The better question is: how far will I go
in projecting myself onto everything I see?