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Reflection, by Barbara Lydecker Crane

6/28/2020

2 Comments

 
Picture
Old Woman Sitting, by Francoise Duparc (Spain) date not known 1726-1778

Reflection

A washerwoman sits for me today.
Accepting francs, she says she’s pleased to rest.
To answer why I paint her, I only say
the reddened arms she crosses at her breast
frame her face that’s washed in winter light.    
The fichu round her neck is striped with blue
(from years of wear, that fabric’s nearly white).
She seems to know that she is fading, too.
But with her gray-green, deep-set eyes that gaze
with quiet equanimity, she’ll need
no painted flourish or sentimental praise
from me. This woman’s portrait may succeed
if viewers can perceive a will to live
yet resignation for what fate will give.

Barbara Lydecker Crane
​
Barbara Lydecker Crane, a finalist for the 2017 and the 2019 Rattle Poetry Prize, has won awards from the Maria Faust Sonnet Contest, the Helen Schaible Sonnet Contest, and others. She has published three chapbooks: Zero Gravitas (White Violet Press, 2012), Alphabetricks (Daffydowndilly Press, 2013), and BackWords Logic (Local Gems Press, 2017). Her poems have appeared in Ekphrastic Review, First Things, Light, Lighten-Up-Online, Measure, Rattle, Think, Writer’s Almanac, and several anthologies.  She is also an artist.
2 Comments
David Belcher
7/1/2020 03:43:12 am

Growing to love this more and more. Keep coming back to it. The rhymes melt into the poem, so much so I didn't notice them at first.

Reply
Barbara Lydecker Crane
10/16/2020 02:19:21 pm

David, I just saw this comment--thank you so much! I love your idea of the rhymes melting into the poem.

Reply

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