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A Still Life by Van Gogh

Among the purple irises, one stalk
is bent to breaking; several slender

blue-green leaves lift
through a galaxy of billowing blossoms.

One thing rises while another
declines, and who can say why––

isn’t that the essential gesture
of everything planted here? I know nothing

with any certainty, the artist wrote,
but the sight of the stars

makes me dream. In a vase of rough
baked earth, imagine an ennobling

of all that stands from day to day,
and all that falls aside.

© 2000 by Brian Powers

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