ManicDDaily

Still Life

There is, in the framing of fruit,
a special deliciousness.

Yes, there’s awe
for shown skill, the furring of a peach
with paint, but for me
much of the magic lies
in the frame–not the gilded, the scrolled,
the varnished wood–the simple edge,
parameter, the fact that the seen–
the scene–ends.

When we underscore
almost anything,
then extend that bottom line
four square,
we pare down the all-too-much
to a center,
fence a tableau,
tame–no, aim–the random,
the overbreadth, the more-
than-the-eye-
can-take-in,

making a window
into the not-right-here-
right-now, which, for all
we praise the moment,
we crave.

I think of suddenly
dark streets, just into
a shift of seasons, when walking in cold that falls
as quick as night, I look up to find a dinner hour, three flights
from the street–so elegant
from the asphalt, even a penny jar
on top of some inner refrigerator shining
like a goblet, a goblet like a sliver of moon,
then higher, half a block over, an aquarium blue
as remembered June;
in the not-quite basement apartment at sidewalk-level,
someone’s best wooden bowl on their nicked
wooden counter backdropped
by scuffed floor–all
the different grains angled
by panes into a pattern
the eye finds marvelous, everything made much
by its confines.

Oh yes, we admire thinking
outside the box,
but how beautiful is
the box

where life holds still
as long as we want, and then some,
while we, standing at its window, wonder whether
we’ll ever make it through.

***************************
Here’s a belated and drafty poem for Margaret Bednar’s prompt on With Real Toads relating to the wonderful still lives of American painter, Severin Roesin.   The above pic was taken by Margaret Bednar on her iPhone and is a detail of a Roesin’s “Still Life with Fruit.”

(A typo–lack of comma in the first posted version has been remedied!)