Pink and Champagne
Suzanne Morris
March 26, 2023
–for Cova and Lyn
We are five old friends–
two married couples and me–
walking to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts
on a balmy Saturday afternoon
where Van Gogh’s
soul-baring self-portrait
will pierce me through
with sorrow and
wet my cheeks with tears.
There is barely room for two
on the sidewalk which is
heaved up in places from the
knobby roots of old, thick-trunked oaks,
and I am content to stay
a few paces behind
attuned to the back-and-forth
rhythm of your voices
the sun winking between
shaggy treetops as we pass.
How young we all feel, far
younger than our years.
One of you is dressed in beige slacks
and a champagne chiffon top,
the other in pink print cropped pants
and a pink summer sweater.
Later, while luxuriating in
glasses of chilled wine
the five of us will talk about the
paintings we found most arresting
and the catch in my voice
will show
I am still held in the
grip of Van Gogh.
As darkness falls,
we’ll order dinner from cloth-bound menus
that–we’ll admit with a laugh–
are hard to read by
candle flame.
For now, we advance,
the men walking behind,
shirts open at the neck,
light jackets and comfortable slacks,
a good-natured chuckle
erupting now and then.
We have been doing this
for over a decade
and though I know that
nothing lasts forever, still
I will not be prepared
for the first death among us–
eight years have now passed
since we lost him–
nor for the man beside him to
lose his reason so that
eventually the couple will
cease going out.
Now there are only two of us.
As though it were yesterday,
I can see you in your
pink cropped pants
and you wearing beige
and champagne,
leading us on a sunny day
to a place that
none of us could have
known was there
but was, perhaps, foretold
in the portrait that
haunts me still.
Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait, 1887, oil on cardboard, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).
Suzanne Morris is a novelist and poet. Her poems have been published in anthologies, and in online poetry journals including The Texas Poetry Assignment, Emblazoned Soul Review, The New Verse News, The Pinecone Review, and Stone Poetry Quarterly.
