Photo by Dorothea Lange
Caption: Destitute peapickers in California; a 32-year-old mother of seven children. February 1936.

Reproduction number: LC-USF34-9058-C (film negative); Library of
Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection J339168

Apropos Psalm 137
Apropos Psalm 137
A meditation on Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother

At the muddied threshold of our exposed lean-to,
huddled with other hovels in the forsaken camp—
there we sat down. We might have wept,
having beheld the pea crop lying ruined,
struck down at tender age by bitter frost
like a plague upon Egypt—might have wept,
were not springs of sadness already iced over,
had not the last salty stream coursing down worry-grooved channels
long since dried up, as soon may, too, life-milk from spent breast.
And then she arrived, exiting the car with a camera,
and asked whether she might photograph us.
How shall we pose for this stranger,
we who do not belong to this land?
What strained furrowing of anxious brow,
what turned-down line of drawn lips,
what oblique posture of calloused hand
resting pensively against hollowed cheek,
could say?—that we are lost,
that we yearn to be at home, for what had been our home
(remember, children?—
picking daisies and tomatoes from the garden,
afternoon picnics under the sheltering oak,
the porch swing creaking as it cradled our weight);
what distant gaze from deep-set eyes
toward a life nearly sunk beneath the horizon,
could say?—that another dawn awakens only a barren dream,
that hope lies fallow on frozen fields.

—Darrin W. Snyder Belousek teaches philosophy part-time at Bethel College (Ind.) and studies part-time at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. He lives in Elkhart, Indiana, with his wife Paula and attends Prairie Street Mennonite Church.