After reading Dwight Roth’s ekphrastic poem on Vincent Van Gogh, I had to consider it as a challenge. I wrote this poem over 25 years ago. Couldn’t resist publishing it as an answer to his.

Mulberry

Vincent, who scratched your sky
And put tormented souls into your tree?
Who pushed white waterfalls
From gray granite
and ran white water purple down to these words,
etched into a marker by the stream.

Vincent, who scratched your sky
And fired the dying branches of your tree?
Who carved white steps
From living hillside?
What figure yellow-robed ascends
To cast a scribbled shadow down to green?

Vincent, who scratched your sky
and set the worm to work your tortured tree?
Who hid the bad boy
In the brush,
Then set his white soul down
To weather on the gravestone of a frozen dream?

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