The following poem was first published in Cloudbank (Fall 2013).
A Woman Cutting Hay
after The Haymakers, 1886, by Julien Dupre (1851-1910)
In truth,
my skirt is gray.
The scarf around my hair is brown.
There is black beneath my fingernails, and sweat
across my brow.
In the air float tiny flecks of hay
that catch and shiver
in my throat. My eyes water and I cough, but
coughing does not lay me low:
I am no milk-white lily, though he
paints me tender white, this Monsieur Dupre,
as though the sun that graces us with light does not also
burn our skin, and burden us
with heat.
Monsieur Dupre, he knows so little
of our lives. He cannot feel
the way our bodies hold the twist and bend
of long hours in the field. He does not know the aching
of our arms, long after we walk home at end of day,
or the way, just after we have set aside our tools,
our fingers still curve round the ghosts
of wooden handles. He does not know
my palms, as hard and calloused as
the bottoms of my feet.
I have always known these fields
and little else.
When I was very small, I ran through shifting yellow walls
even as my parents cut them low for hay.
My children will be born and married
with the whisper of tall grasses in their ears.
When I am my mother’s age, which is Monsieur’s age,
my face will be like hers, criss-crossed with lines,
like straw dropped on the pathway to the barn.
All this he does not know, and so
he does not paint it.
But no matter – He
knows how to take what nature gives, and give it to me
new. In his work I see
the brilliant air, the light
in clouds and on this earth.
His sky is bright, his breeze is mild. My skirt is royal
blue, and jewel red
is my scarf.
In his hands I feel
my strength. I lean to pull my hay, lean
right off the canvas
toward the world of Julien Dupre, and I am
beautiful,
and everything I see
is beauty.
A Woman Cutting Hay
after The Haymakers, 1886, by Julien Dupre (1851-1910)
In truth,
my skirt is gray.
The scarf around my hair is brown.
There is black beneath my fingernails, and sweat
across my brow.
In the air float tiny flecks of hay
that catch and shiver
in my throat. My eyes water and I cough, but
coughing does not lay me low:
I am no milk-white lily, though he
paints me tender white, this Monsieur Dupre,
as though the sun that graces us with light does not also
burn our skin, and burden us
with heat.
Monsieur Dupre, he knows so little
of our lives. He cannot feel
the way our bodies hold the twist and bend
of long hours in the field. He does not know the aching
of our arms, long after we walk home at end of day,
or the way, just after we have set aside our tools,
our fingers still curve round the ghosts
of wooden handles. He does not know
my palms, as hard and calloused as
the bottoms of my feet.
I have always known these fields
and little else.
When I was very small, I ran through shifting yellow walls
even as my parents cut them low for hay.
My children will be born and married
with the whisper of tall grasses in their ears.
When I am my mother’s age, which is Monsieur’s age,
my face will be like hers, criss-crossed with lines,
like straw dropped on the pathway to the barn.
All this he does not know, and so
he does not paint it.
But no matter – He
knows how to take what nature gives, and give it to me
new. In his work I see
the brilliant air, the light
in clouds and on this earth.
His sky is bright, his breeze is mild. My skirt is royal
blue, and jewel red
is my scarf.
In his hands I feel
my strength. I lean to pull my hay, lean
right off the canvas
toward the world of Julien Dupre, and I am
beautiful,
and everything I see
is beauty.
