Vincent understood them: the way they yield
their darkling faces to the sun,
aflame for its arcing shimmer dance
across the day’s mysterious expanse,
how big they are, how weighty, over grown,
the way they lean together in the fields,
conspiring to hold each other up, creak and groan
as their heads reach critical mass, aswarm with too much seed.

He gathered them in vases, painted their petaled fall from grace,
bunched together, shy, askew and awkward, out of place,
caught their surprise at being indoors, the droop and shrug of leaves,
the way they suddenly dropped, losing all of their color.
Too painful to paint them riotous at the roadside in full bloom:
signs of what we were before the crows moved in to feed.