Seville Still Life, by Barbara Crooker

Seville Still Life, by Henri Matisse (France) 1911

Seville Still Life

An arm chair with a shawl of deep Atlantic blue.  
A settee the colour of the garrigue patterned
with flowers and pink flamingoes, and two end tables
draped in the same cloth.  And a tablecloth the shade
of Seville oranges, all floating on a terra cotta sea.
It’s a riot of color, inviting the eye to sit down
and eat.  From the open window, a fresh breeze
is billowing the curtain like a flag.  The pleasures 
of the table reign among other pleasures, 
said Brillat-Savorin. No food on this table, 
only a cool white pitcher outlined in blue, 
a splotch of lemon on its side.  But I can imagine 
a plate of cheeses, a scattering of grapes.  
I read somewhere that Roquefort is not just a cheese, 
it’s a complex network of shepherds, dairymen, 
fromagers, geologists, hewers and haulers,
business executives.  I put a wedge in my mouth,
and a meadow of wildflowers blooms.  Matisse’s father
said Everything you do is pointless and leads nowhere,
and I wonder, where else would you want to be?

Barbara Crooker

This poem appeared in Barbara Crooker's book, Some Glad Morning (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019.)

Barbara Crooker is the author of many books of poetry; Some Glad Morning and Les Fauves are recent.  Her work has appeared in many anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Commonwealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, The Poetry of Presence and Nasty Women: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, and she has received a number of awards, including the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award,  three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships in Literature, and the Fantastic Ekphrastic award of recognition from The Ekphrastic Review for her body of art-inspired writing.