Donna Pucciani
Donna Pucciani, a Chicago-based writer, has published poetry worldwide in Shi Chao Poetry, Poetry Salzburg, ParisLitUp, Mediterranean Poetry, Gradiva, Acumen and other journals. Her seventh and latest collection of poetry is EDGES.
Scarecrow
Berthe Morisot, In the Cornfield at Gennevilliers
1895, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
This is not the painting
that museum-goers stand before, soaking up
the red of a woman’s hat, or the crimson poppies
dotting verdant fields.
Not umbrellas sprouting on a canvas
like strange mushrooms and a Paris street
silvered with rain.
Not the blue tutus of ballerinas,
the bridges smudged across bottomless rivers,
or gardens frothing with shrubs.
Not haystacks or cathedrals brushed by dawn,
flamed by noon, purpled by twilight.
This is a painting we’d pass by.
Here, a horizontal block of faded ochre
anchors a solitary figure resembling a scarecrow.
He stands in the foreground’s patch of muddy turf.
Behind him, across the field, houses and farms
scatter like blackbirds, and a smokestack pokes
a nondescript sky. The man himself is nondescript,
having stepped towards us with the calm deliberation
of someone who has a destination in mind.
He shoulders a rucksack of sorts, and has remembered
his hat. His two pinpoint eyes stare out
of a nearly faceless visage, as though the journey
to find himself is as important as where
he will lay his head at sunset. Over all, the sky
hovers like a nameless god, a swatch of yellow-gray
holding the lone human in its gaze,
neither asking a question nor telling the truth,
following the day tripper
with its all-seeing, cycloptic eye.
