Antwerp

My father gave me a trip to Paris, Brussels, Antwerp and

the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. I stayed at the Marriot.

In Amsterdam I walked past Vincent’s painting of crows

from the crow field after the entrance

and the drawings of the coal miners. And I ended up, at the end,

by the tree, from the floor to the ceiling of his brush strokes.

I was standing with a painting of Van Gogh’s where the brush strokes

crafted in my heart how he felt as he stood there painting.

I went on another trip to Cambridge and London where a friend

had studied art during one summer. She and I traveled up A1, or was it E1,

and towards evening we stopped off season at a restaurant along the

side of the ocean with the tall grass flowing out to the beach. They opened

the restaurant for us for dinner before we made our way to a

Bed and Breakfast in Edinburgh. In Perth I had bought a green glass

apple for my mother.