The Gleaning Field, by Louise Longson

The Gleaning Field, by Samuel Palmer (Britain) 1833

The Gleaning Field
 
There is something
more than nature, here.  
 
Encircled by trees that at once protect
and threaten; trunks writhe toward the human forms 
with a lithe, sinister energy.
 
Women.  I notice they are all women. 
Stooped to labour in fields of crimson and 
burnished gold, under a heavy grey sky, 
darkening with dusk.  They are wearing 
white, and red.  The colours of sacrifice, 
of victimhood. Of revolution.
 
In half the field, the corn is still high;
a barrier from the lighted window of
a cottage glimpsed in the gloaming dark.
It is home to someone, comfort, warmth; 
but they are separate, discrete. There is a quiet 
urgency about their work. As if they know their lives,
these rights will soon be restricted, enclosed.
 
Louise Longson

For information on gleaning rights and legal/social changes to the rural poor: http://www.criminalhistorian.com/gleaning-poor-women-and-the-law/ 

Louise Longson is an Oxfordshire-based writer, who has been published by One Hand Clapping, Fly on the Wall and Dreich.  A qualified psychotherapist, working for a charity serving those distressed by loneliness, she has finally cleared enough of her own head-space and house-space to pursue her writing in earnest.  Twitter @LouisePoetical