Laura McCullough
How Artists See Weather


Blue is arguable at best, the realm
       of blues being broad and wide
and fights happen between the land
       of cerulean and that of cobalt;
ain't it all just blue? No one would argue

       that reductively, but the class
divide is jagged twixt those who call
       for sea foam or for cyan.
How about orchid rather than purple?
       The sky presses down on

the painter with no less grief, the wand
       waved overhead collecting
low pressure particles is flicked across
       the canvas: there is carnage
in Geurnica which is not about weather,

       but does depict a storm;
and Van Gogh's sunshine eats the earth
       and is infused in each brush
stroke the way sun is infused in wheat:
       the bread we eat is full

of it. Think of eating Van Gogh
       crustinis or Picasso pâté;
would we ingest their eyes, what came
       through their fingers?
Is blue enough for you? Some days

       it is for me, and others,
I want the ochre madness damping
       down my soulless day, proof
of what I am, mad and kind, a horse's
       face inside my own, or else

the sower of the sun arguing for nothing,
       just, yes, yes, this is blue,
and so is this, and this, all in my arms
       a collusion of ungrown things
waiting to be tossed into the air.

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