Still Life

Late afternoon, somewhere in England

by a bowl of apples just past peak,

I could see again: there are no ordinary objects.

Each is lovely in its odd one-offness,

which implies an origin

as strange as mine or yours.

And each is dying in its slow-burn way,

a decomposing that repeats the fall:

a kind of withering bronze sadness

as the skins go dark in different places,

soft and mottled like a baby’s scalp,

the fontanel depressed. I could understand

their near disguise in clubby sameness,

and the need to pause in waning sunlight

in a milky bowl. They seek

an equilibrium, a fictive moment

where they feign a freedom from decay

or boring growth. I feel that way

sometimes but lack their classical repose,

the waxy sheen that coddles brightness but allows

a casual release of light,

that sense of safety in small numbers

gathered in a haze, in ripeness

general beyond each shrinking globe,

a fragrance that assembles slowly in the air,

filling up the room with life, still life.