Starry Night, Revisited

Another river view, and another reach back to an earlier poem - and another link to my daily blog effort of sweeping my past poetry into one place this year.  This one’s sentimental, sparked perhaps by what may be, this month or next, an imminent ending to my four year divorce.


Vincent Van Gogh’s most famous Starry Night painting shows a wild sky with swirling, pyrotechnic stars that cast a blue-gray glow on the town below it. It must be late at night, as there are no house lights and no people. This is the Starry, Starry Night of Don McLean’s song Vincent, reflecting how the artist “suffered for [his] sanity.” 

It is a powerful moment, but I prefer Van Gogh’s earlier astral painting: Starry Night over the Rhone.  The night is calmer, the stars are more balanced and the city is still awake with its own lights; a river flows across the canvas and there are exactly two people on the riverside, standing together and inviting us to take it all in.

Years ago, when I was one of two people, we bought a copy of this painting for our living room. My other is no longer with me; she is somewhere else, suffering for her own sanity now, and my days with her are forever in the past, but I still like keeping that painting on my wall...

Starry Night, Revisited

(enhanced, and with a borrowed refrain from 
Widow's Grove, by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan)


The sky above, the earth below
The city it stirs, the river it flows.
We walk at night that we may see
The stars and know we’re not alone,
  
That we may breathe a different air
And walk along a quiet shore,
Stand silent where the river laps
Up to our feet, 

Wondering where 
We were before.

   I followed you to the river
   That washes out to the sea.
   Between city lights and stars at night,
   That's where I'll be.

    ---

The earth is black, the sky is blue.
The river bends a mirrored view
Of city lights and stars familiar,
Heaven down and shore to shore.
  
We meet the night. We take the time
To be together, you and I,
Across the river, in between
The city and a giant sky.

   I followed you to the river
   That washes out to the sea.
   Between city lights and stars at night,
   That's where I'll be.
  
    ---
  
We breathe the sky and feel the earth
And find our place beneath the stars,
Your arm in mine and mine in yours.
The world is right and the night is ours.

   I followed you to the river
   That washes out to the sea.
   Between city lights and stars at night,
   That's where I'll be.
  
   Between city lights and stars at night,
   That's where I'll be.


also published in Confluence; originally from Calendrums, 2011; Starry Night over the Rhone by Vincent Van Gogh, 1888; Widow's Grove by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, 2006