'Cafe Terrace at Night' by Carly Winchell

​Cafe Terrace at Night
By Carly Winchell
 
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
            Vincent Van Gogh
 
Postpartum impression is a condition
artists are uniquely familiar with.
 
A soft lit cafe hints of darkness
 
pressing in cool blues, oppressive black.
 
Middle-ground of cobbled stones
mingling like pixels, warm and cold.
 
Many dots comprise a whole, different colors
create a palette, create a cafe and the world.
 
Starry Night sky gives a hint of greatness
that will never be achieved in this lifetime
 
of solitude and paint.  The man who fades
into the back shadow of the house is me.
 
Clad in red warmth facing away from the light
since I was a child, I would face away from life
 
looking not at the cafe but the shadows its light
creates.  A horseman approaches, materializing
 
even as I dissipate into the night.  Matter is never
created or destroyed, only transformed into
 
yellow metamorphic light, blue cerulean shadow,
cool and warm pixels, a cobblestone road.
 
Many small things come together for greatness,
death and the metamorphosis of paint into life.
 
Edited by Janeal Downs