Starry Night’s Embrace
A poem that captures the ethereal beauty and emotional depth of Van Gogh's "Starry Night."
This poem is part of the NaPoWriMo 2025 challenge to write a poem a day in April. This is the prompt for April 13.
Donald Justice’s poem, “There is a gold light in certain old paintings,” plays with both art and music, and uses an interesting and (as far as I know) self-invented form. His six-line stanzas use lines of twelve syllables, and while they don’t use rhyme, they repeat end words. Specifically, the second and fourth line of each stanza repeat an end-word or syllable; the fifth and sixth lines also repeat their end-word or syllable. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that uses Justice’s invented form.
I took the photo above when we visited Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience—Washington, DC in 2022. It was incredible!
There is a melody woven into the sky, A dance of bright stars that swirl in dream-deep silence; The wind carries notes that rise with the crescent moon, As shadows sway gently beneath the tall silence; Each brushstroke a heartbeat, alive with deep longing, Echoes of quiet, nothingness pulse with longing. In the quiet, the colors hum in harmony, Golden orbs spin tales of hope through the vast stillness; Look! The village below breathes softly, unaware, While collective dreams weave through thick, swirling stillness, A symphony of solitude, immense, tender, An eternal serenade—notes ever tender. The cool night wraps the earth in its velvet embrace, A canvas alive with sounds yet to awaken, Where every painted swirl sings of light lost and found, And the stars, like keys, shimmering bright—awaken; As brushstrokes evoke a concerto of movement, Remind us that beauty resides in slow movement.
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