Three Medlars & a Butterfly, by Blake Leland

Three Medlars and a Butterfly, by Adriaen Coorte (Netherlands) 1696-1705

    
Three Medlars & a Butterfly 
 
On this same block of dense-grained stone 
Adriaen Coorte has sometime set out 
Walnuts, seashells, peaches, plums, 
And again and again, bundled stalks 
Of pale asparagus.   
 
                                                    Now, 
Three new-plucked medlars 
Laid side by side in drowsy light, 
Their tawn skins drawn tight still 
About the hard, acidic fruit—not yet 
In this small, immortal moment 
Grown rotten-ripe— 
 
And there above them, a butterfly, 
A Cabbage White, late  
In his season, that has come 
Just in time, and still 
Too soon.

Blake Leland

Blake Leland is a teacher at Georgia Tech, a Pushcart nominee who has published in Epoch, The New Yorker, Poetry International online and a few more places. He thought once he might be a painter but now expresses that impulse in poems in which he tries to bring together vision, music, thought and feeling.