“Je voudrai mettre dans le tableau mon appréciation, mon amour que j’ai pour lui.”
— Vincent Van Gogh, to Theo (Arles, The Yellow House)

I want to paint a friend whose hair grows wild
like grain that leans toward thunder: days
half-spent the way a nightingale must blaze
with song because the night itself is riled
inside its chest. He will be golden-haired —
a harvest sheared and gathered from the bone,
and I shall press into the oils my own
dark gratitude, the love I never spared.
But love is color breaking discipline, burned
from yellow ochre into molten light —
to orange that cracks the ebbing noon in two,
to chrome and spinning citron forced to turn
like suns around his brow. I strike from sight
the petty room — and daub infinities of blue.