“Wheat Fields with Reaper” by Sharon Fish Mooney

November 14, 2016Posted by

Sharon Fish Mooney

WHEAT FIELDS WITH REAPER

after Wheat Fields with Reaper, Auvers,
Vincent van Gogh, oil on canvas, 1890
Toledo Museum of Art

He wears no shrouded hood, no coat of black.
No skeleton or apparition, he,
no grim or aged specter. Here we see
a reaper scything winter wheat that’s stacked
in sheaves of golden grain. There is no lack
of sunshine and the canvas is a sea,
an impastoed panoply, a poetry
of paint demanding viewers to stand back
and view blue mountains under an Auvers sky
with summer clouds, and ponder larger themes—
when we are ripe, the reaping of our lives,
the knowledge that someday, like wheat, we’ll die,
will turn to dust, yet hope to be redeemed
to an eternal place where souls survive.

“The history of those plants is like our own … being reaped when we are ripe.”
—Vincent van Gogh, 1889

—from Rattle #53, Fall 2016
Tribute to Adjuncts

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Sharon Fish Mooney: “I have been teaching online as an adjunct and affiliate faculty for fifteen years. I currently teach nursing research and other courses for Regis University, Denver, Colorado, and Indiana Wesleyan. My interests in poetry, art, and music affect my teaching. I often share with students about conferences I am attending or speaking at and discuss with them ways to integrate the arts and nursing—for example, using metrical poetry in caring for people with dementia. Students often send me their own poems for review and critique.” (website)

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