Adreyo Sen- A Poem

Faith

She stands still on russet fields

and her beauty 

is her sadness.

Hard won is the tenderness in her eyes.

Perhaps the fields are hers,

perhaps she only knows them 

and is at pause 

in her loving labor.

In her print dress, she could be ensconced 

in the elegance of a sofa,

or kneeling by the hearth that warms

its surrounding damp.

In either case would children run to her,

seeking the slender lap

that is the joy of dreamless night.

In fact, so still,

it is a child she is remembering,

a child who

in the brash brightness of her youth

ran laughing through summer fields

as if they could never end.

That child's joy

is the woman's grief.