Whitman
I entreat you dear brother
take up your brush
plunge it into the colors of life.

Van Gogh
I know such extremes, yet
these bars have calmed me,
I have read your poems.

Whitman
The way you love the sky
I love the sky
the way you embrace color
I embrace color.

Van Gogh
The constellations console,
let the eye blend the colors
See the brightness of the sky
reflected in the villagers’ homes.

Whitman
Your paints emote in the starry swirls
I see the night’s bare bosom,
you give that vision light and form
the slumbering and liquid trees.

Van Gogh
I see under the starlit vault of heaven
through your eyes, lover of man
and woman, and all that is friendship.
The morning mist is a crown upon the mountains.

Whitman – Each blade of grass is unique.
Van Gogh – Each star painted individually.

Author Linda Trott Dickman has her roots in Whitman’s Paumanok. She has taught children of all ages in venues traditional and “non”. From Paumanok to Pele’s Lair, she has walked the shores, the forests, the roads, picking up poems along the way

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