Blue.Van Gogh

The horizon line disappears, and I am lost in the sky after the bough breaks. I remember the startle gesture of my babies—their reflexive flailing of arms and legs as they tried to regain a secure hold. In this landscape, I cannot find a hold. Any set of lines would help orient: branches, leaf veins, peripheral blur of field.

The painter finds a quick translation: green equals down. So much depends on depth, width, length. How high the blue stretches, I cannot know. Onward moving clouds cannot hold one position. The painter must finish this picture before it rains, and so he rushes and only suggests compass points. More than a painter, he is a dancer.

But finally, the painter succumbs to sky. He inverts himself, like the man in the tarot card “The Fool.” Blood rushes to his head and turns blue. Leaves open pores to sun and absorb its hue. The painter’s eyes turn the color of heaven, and everything he touches is blue. He is a Midas turning the world blue instead of gold. He creates his own theosophy within an indigo-blue prism.

Like Van Gogh, he finds background twists into the foreground. Past and future collapse. Blue veins leave his body and ascend. I can call them branches. I can call them pieces of sky.