If Van Gogh had painted a cancer cell,
he would have imbued it blue,
made the background glow
like the yellow of his gaslight
to spread hope with saturated rays.
Or he’d have repeated the cancer cell
like patterns on a wallpaper,
given them stems and petals
or interspersed starry lights.
His exuberance with color
couldn’t sell his paintings
in his lifetime nor save him,
but it put a posthumous price on his works
that inflated with time
and immortalized the portraitist,
the painter of sunflowers, landscapes,
and the friend of Joseph Roulin,
the postman who wore a beard with whorls
and a blue uniform sporting yellow buttons,
as he looked out at the world
that never ceases to marvel at him
in the play of light in galleries.
Grey Sparrow Journal 