Basket of Oranges  - van Gogh 1888                       

 

You paint your oranges with flecks

of yellow, ochre, verdigris and white;

the wicker basket like a barge

raises blue ripples on a linen cloth.

 

No blue, you wrote, without yellow and orange.

Fluid gold weaves through the wicker

and radiates energy beyond the frame,

your name, Vincent, scrawled across the flow.

 

And the blue?  It drizzles down the aqua curtains

sheeting the darkening wall behind the fruit

catching the light with yellow and with orange.

 

Six blemished fruit, but oh! the painting

surges through sense and centuries still

vibrant to the eye, the touch, the taste.

 

Diana Mitchener    March 10^th, 2010