Early Canvas

“Wheatfield with a Lark” — not yet a crow — and the sky oddly
serene, the swath of foreground grass untortured: stolid
horizontal bands. The brushstrokes here are fine, a dabbler’s
view while on vacation, ten days reading in a swept yard
and mild weather with a glass of beer at hand.
The lark is flying neither towards us nor away from us,

nor is he bidding us to follow. Turned upside-down, this is
an ocean or lake becalmed, and the dull green summer wheat:
fringe on a coastal merchant’s curtain. Sideways, it’s a flag with a single star.
Or the lark, stuck like a beetle in blue resin, is Vincent’s eldest brother,
still-born and just crossed over into air, a failed attempt, work gone

too quickly to its rational conclusion. This is not what he wanted,
prone to imaginings, he who’d find grief in a simple bird
that neither feeds nor falls. Let it be the paint that burns;
better a sky than the mind churning. Turn this image to the wall.

Copyright © 2004 Nicole Pekarske All rights reserved
from Intermissa, Venus
Cherry Grove Collections
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission