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.