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.