Geranium Lake
  
 ...all the colours that Impressionism has made
  fashionable are unstable, all the more reason 
 boldly to use them too raw, time will only
 soften them too much…
 Vincent Van Gogh in a letter
  to his brother, Theo) 
  
  
 Who knew that paintings fade
 like flowers? 
  
 Van Gogh foresaw the unstable 
 quality of his pigments,
  
 impressed them vividly 
 onto prepared canvas 
  
 as in this picture of a man
 walking with a woman,
  
 arms entwined, air
 heavy as blue metal,
  
 trees spaced like columns
 in a Doric temple, where
  
 undergrowth thick 
 and wavy as seaweed
  
 blooms with color—
 yellow, orange, white—
  
 but that fugitive one,
 called spark or geranium lake,
  
 sent from far afield
 by Theo, used to make
  
 a brief flowering of pink
 has faded to white;
  
 quite the opposite 
 of the trillium
  
 at the base of my elm
 which emerges like snow
  
 but then blushes
 each season into oblivion
  
 shaded by showy
 day lily, shrouded 
  
 afresh in the mystery
 of understory:
  
 this the story,
 the way of man,
  
 of woman, 
 of all flesh.
  
  
 Leslie Schultz 

Image: Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, b.1853, d.1890); Undergrowth with Two Figures; 1890; oil on canvas; Bequest of Mary E. Johnston; 1967.1430. (Cincinnati Museum of Art)