Gerrit Dou was Rembrandt’s first student in the mid to late 1600’s. He is someone I always wished I had been, and when I first discovered him as a young art student studying art history, I had a tremendous amount of envy towards Gerrit, who got to learn from the master Rembrandt … it was but a dream, but a dream I had many, many, many times and still feeling achy those subtle twinges of envy even now. So this poem is sort of a tribute to Rembrandt, Garrit Dou and the dreams one has as a young artist yearning to connect to art history and learn from the genius Rembrandt in person and not merely through books and the paintings and art work he left behind.