This Is the Fruit

I watch him pouring linseed oil in
silly little cups, proposing
to hold his brush just so.  The fruit

sits before him on my table like
a meal noone will eat, dishes
arranged among an army of old T-shirts.

The pear garners the most attention.
Its label is the more garish of those assembled
at the lip of a platter last used for cake.

With each squeeze of the tubes
he makes another earth-tone on his
glass horizon; the knife he holds

is dull, more a pie-server than a blade,
a spatula to spread the mortar
that holds his world together.  A world

of fruit.  This is the fruit
that revels against a gray background,
parties onto the canvas like animals

in a circus, a riotous still-life
moving only in his mind, a fruitful mind
with no labels and very little oil.

1-1-2000