Van Gogh by Elizabeth Dingmann Schneider

“The rose is red because it rejects red.” —John O’Donohue, Beauty: An Invisible Embrace

Van Gogh’s White Roses were meant to be pink,

the faded madder red sold to him by a charlatan

peddling adulterated pigments.

This false red abandoned his roses,

leaving only a chemical trace

accessible to the scientists

who now analyze what lies within.

Undoubtedly, today

the roses are white, the pigment

rejecting not only the red vibrations but all

wavelengths of light, sending them bouncing

back at the human eye, as pure white

as the light driven through Newton’s second prism,

Newton discovering that colors

are pieces of a blinding whole.

Elizabeth Dingmann Schneider lives and writes in Minneapolis. Her collection Blood is available from Red Bird Chapbooks, where she formerly served as a poetry editor. Elizabeth’s work has also been published in Sleet, the What Light Poetry Contest, Commons Magazine, Mosaic, the Saint Paul Almanac, and DOG EAR.