Flowers at church

Sunflowers on either side

of the altar, black centers

fringed in yellow, looking

upward as they tend to do,

upward to find the sun,

sunflowers from Arles

painted repeatedly

as he slipped into madness

painted originally

by God.

Was God in the yellow house,

the yellow room in Arles,

the odd-shaped room

and the odd-shaped man

in the odd-shaped house

on Place Lamartine,

in Arles.

 Paintings: Top, Vase with Twelve Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh (1888); bottom, The Yellow House in Arles by Vincent Van Gogh (1888).