a deep dark well

I long for Van Gogh’s eyes.
To see dusky shadows and
ever-changing light;
drifting, bleeding, bouncing,
bursting, breathing, dancing.

Until I remember his despair,
his unending pain. How it burdened
and, eventually, buried him.
How he wrote these words
to Theo, his brother,

“I am so angry with myself because I cannot do
what I should like to do…, (it feels) as if
one were lying bound hand and foot
at the bottom of a deep dark well,
utterly helpless."