Day 16-ish: Still Life, with Children

Poem:

Still Life, with Children

In the middle of a lacquered pine table

sits an oak bowl,

one black knot carved into its side.

The tips of four bananas

protrude above the rim,

curl around six faded red apples

and five tiny oranges,

a gap in the center of the bowl

while fruit almost balances

around the rim.

Beside the bowl,

powdery orange fingersmears

and dusty shards of Doritos

stretch toward the edge,

a curved river of artificial colors

that slides between

leaning, three-quarters finished

Lego ship

and yesterday’s mail pile.

One orange sits on the edge,

dangles precariously,

hovers ready to demolish the ship

or settle gently among the bananas.

 

Commentary:

 

This is an ekphrastic poem, responding to Salvador Dali's Living Still Life with my own take.  The painting essentially deconstructs the concept of a still life painting by showing dishes and utensils in the air, in motion, leaning, and basically anything but still.  As a parent of two elementary-aged boys, this represents my reality, as even when things look still, activity lingers either at the surface or just beneath.

 

I think of a still life in words as noun-focused, and I ended most of the lines with nouns for that reason.  The tension lies in between, in the lines that do end differently and in the verbs in the middle of the lines, representing an attempt within the poem to reflect the activity underlying everything there.

 

In this case, the table is one just left, signs of life and movement evident everywhere. Objects lean and dangle, and even the non-moving river of Doritos aftermath shows the mess actively left behind.  I end with the orange, hovering on the edge between destruction and peaceful settling, the perpetual state of things where children are involved.