Finding a Van Gogh at the Garage Sale

a found poem

Photo by Kadir Celep on Unsplash

A year ago my journalist friend Kelly Crow published an article in the Wall Street Journal (Was That a Real Van Gogh) about a possible Van Gogh painting sold at a Minnesota garage sale for almost nothing. The painting depicts a fisherman with a pipe repairing a net on a beach.

The article inspired my own found poem (look it up!).

And so I keep learning. That’s all poetry is. Discovery.

Finding a Van Gogh at the Garage Sale
a found poem 

It was the Fisherman						
who plucked threads						
scrawled from the deep 

a scouring 
of turbulent language
hung from his net

a breadcrumb trail 
of belief, words surged
from brushstrokes

of religious lines
compounded
into thick impastos 

of pages 
in painted oeuvre—
their written groundswell

a gallery of impressions
round for repairs  
when submitted

to the handwritten 
composition 
of revelation—

the cross 
of Master-piece
as windfall

beneath
the starry nights
of asylum. 

composed from “Was That a Real Van Gogh at the Garage Sale?”  by Kelly Crow
Wall Street Journal Feb. 1-2 Weekend Edition 2025.