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The Gleaning Field, by Louise Longson

2/13/2021

1 Comment

 
Picture
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 


1 Comment
Laura Gill
4/27/2021 05:01:10 pm

I love this poem Louise!

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