while Odysseus is away
an ekphrasis: photography by man of aran
Pear inquiry There you sit, still as a pear portrayed, mildly monumental, fending off a ragtag platoon, nearly intimidating, of ardent grapes, suitors to your august Penelope. How you are able to endure your known forbearance, disciplined while delectable, object of decades of desire, is any one’s guess. Is it that you, in your unstudied shapeliness, come hither girth, your flirtatious inclinations, remain forever, though rapt, bound in agonized tension? Or is it attachment to an abiding inner stoic, oh steady Grecian pome, that renders you true, fidelity your lodestar? Or could it be, perhaps more inevitably, a found and painterly luminescence, inwardly emanating, that comes to imbue your chosen canvas— palette to light-stroke, motion, perspective— in other words, the promise of love, what’s known merely as a knack, what feels like, and may well be, destiny?
Lovely, eloquent poem. I especially like the Grecian touch with the metaphor of the pear and Penelope.
Very, should I say,
tasty?
It would seem to me
That she is waiting
For her pair
To appear.