At the Van Gogh Alive exhibition
two children are rolling side by side
through images projected on the floor:
a train runs across the wheat field in Montmajour
onto their T-shirts; a premonition of crows
gathers in their hair through an indigo sky.
The children roll from one end of each painting
to the other, pause, then back again in sync,
colours sliding from them like moods,
as the artist’s words illuminate the ceiling —
There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
The two now enter a woodland, adorned in branches
and roots, and when the leaves begin to fall
they stand to face each other at the treeline,
stippled in green and gold, and embrace.
TESS JOLLY has published two pamphlets: Touchpapers (Eyewear) and Thus the Blue Hour Comes (Indigo Dreams). Her first full collection, Breakfast at the Origami Café, was published in 2020 by Blue Diode Press. She lives with her family on the south coast of the UK, where she runs her freelance editing business: Poems and Proofs.
Read more by Tess Jolly
Tess Jolly’s Website
Poem at One Hand Clapping
Poem in Black Nore Review
Two poems in Bad Lilies