Smithereens Press Chapbooks The Sea Path by Ciarán O'Rourke | Page 21

Still Life of Peaches and Figs
(Paul Cézanne, 1890)
This time
I’m sending peaches,
and a summer’s sun
that dawdles in
on last year’s kitchen
where the plates
are never empty.
Pure vowels
of the unperfected
morning, they are
lain or left out
in whatever
slow tumble
of fruit-fall
they fell from,
casual as rain.
And figs! Echoshaped, but so sure
in their small
altering of light,
they remake
the room entirely.
Oh, love, I know:
all of this you’ve heard
before, and words
are neither round nor heavy
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