Liberties

Liberties

What should I do with this girl
in the painting, these grapes.

Why has the still life stayed.
Hundreds of years, hundreds

and hundreds, and still, fruit,
ladies, the scrimshaw of light

and shadow along the edges
of their bones under the skin.

Flowers in a vase, and ocean
beneath grey clouds. Was she

beautiful in her time, we wonder
of the women, and what would

that have meant for her. What
are the consequences of luminosity.

The flowers have all their petals.
The shore cowers off-stage.