After Vermeer, by Richard Waring

The Milkmaid, by Johannes Vermeer (Netherlands), 1658-1661.

After Vermeer

A brow lost in thought while
making lace. Bread brought

to life as if someone were
expected right about now.

The point in a music lesson
when radiant light falls on a

rug-draped table, say, or an
open-mouthed woman reads

a love letter. Privacy unfolds
in the intimacy of a room.

A spiritual calm as milk is
poured, its white bounty.

Richard Waring

Richard Waring’s poems have appeared in the Ars Medica, Comstock Review, Chest, Sanctuary, Contact II, Dark Horse, the American Journal of Nursing, Mothering, Inward Springs, ParentSource, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and other publications. He has been anthologized in The Pocket Poetry Parenting Guide, Rough Places Plain: Poems of the Mountains, and the Unitarian Universalist Poets: A Contemporary American Survey, and has appeared on Phone-A-Poem and the cable TV show BookBeat. His first book of poetry, What Love Tells Me, was published by Word Poetry in 2016. His chapbook, Listening to Stones, was published in 1999 by Pudding House Publications. He is a senior layout artist for the New England Journal of Medicine.