Doug Stone

Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows (July,1890)

His ravenous eyes gorged
on the succulent summer light
until his tears blazed with color.
But this painting devoured light:
a landscape without hope;
wheat and sky roiling like
a flood toward oblivion.

With quick, desperate strokes
he released a murder of crows
across the torrent of wheat,
into the troubled sky,
scavenging for any scraps
of calm in the catastrophe
as if his art could save him.

Doug Stone lives in Albany, Oregon. He has written three collections of poetry, The Season of Distress and Clarity, The Moon’s Soul Shimmering on the Water, and Sitting in Powell’s Watching Burnside Dissolve in Rain.