Member-only story
Crows (Ode to Van Gogh)
Prose poem inspired by Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa
3 min readAug 31, 2019
Arles, France – July, 1890
“I must hurry. Time is running out.
So little time left for me to paint!”
He worked himself as a slave,
drove himself like a locomotive.
And possessed by the love of his craft,
he hastened up the pebbled path.
It was almost sunset,
and he had to paint the crows today.
Beneath a tattered straw hat,
that framed his gruff, sun-battered face,
a bloodstained bandage covered his damaged profile.
He acknowledged my presence.
In reverence, I joined him for a while.
Under that tattered straw hat,
dark, covetous eyes squinted over the horizon
as if they could consume the natural setting,
devouring it completely and wholly.
