Gayle Elen Harvey

Final Days
(After Van Gogh——)

Less rested
than when you began, you paint crows hanging late
over wheat fields.
Dark inklings, they trigger spasmodic dreams.
Their numerous anthems begin
flinching you,
laying claim like the mistral’s erotic
scherzo.

No longer bulletproof
in the midst of it, you paint dusk.
Its drenched house of petals, its true weight, impervious
with the black wings
of too many.

Your sunflowers collude.
A mosaic of garbled strokes, their yellows begin
bellowing.
Colors distance the landscape.
Unopened for looking, an asylum of olive
and cypress trees
babbles.
It hoards no more comfort.

No one knows
what you carry.
Uncentered, your body rushes out of
its boundaries.
You cannot endure the unguarded horizon.
This thick sky with its slurry
of stars.
_____

Gayle Elen Harvey has published seven chapbooks and won numerous awards. Her most recent chapbooks are titled Sow’s Ear, Pudding House, and Spire Press. She lives in Utica, New York.