Wheatfield With Crows

     by Richard Meyer
     art: Vincent van Gogh’s “Wheatfield with Crows.” 1890. Oil on canvas. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

a field of yellow grief

pressed by an iron sky—

pain applied impasto

roads wind from nowhere

to nothing—snipped short,

blunt and abrupt, like cut rope

and the crows coming in—

dark hinges dropping low

over the troubled grain

sinister wedges, black Vs

scribbled beyond the horizon,

stuttering to say your name

and their rusty voices

striking like clods of dirt—

mocking van caw, van caw

No sunflowers flourish here.

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Richard Meyer, a retired English and humanities teacher, lives in his family home, the house his father built in Mankato, a city at the bend of the Minnesota River. His poems have appeared in Able Muse, The Classical Outlook, 14, and The Flea.

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© 2011 Richard Meyer