Jug of Milk
by Susan de Sola
(From Vermeer’s “The Milkmaid”)
She caresses the jug,
the milk tops the table.
A four square hand,
its robust thumb
sidles up the handle
in soft connection
through the green cloth
of a magician’s table
through a rough stone floor
to earth and worms and grass and cows.
We are born and go
from milk to meat
to earth to worms
to grass to feed a cow again
(and the Dutch know cows).
But here, in this Vermeer,
the light, which is none of these things,
makes a great deal good.
The earthy Dutch, they caught that light,
pounded it in pigments (earth again),
but still, it seeps out,
a wondrous milky haze
here in the museum
enfolds my shoulders,
lets me forget those cows,
lets me think everything is light.