Revisionist Poetry – Autumn’s Fruit, v.4 (ekphrastic reworking for painters)

The frame holds a tipped crate,
its lip offering up colour —
ochre, rust, lichen-green —
a spill arranged by gravity, not grace.

Each gourd is rendered patiently:
thick ribs catching light,
warted skins stippled like dry brush
pressed into stubborn canvas.

Shadow pools beneath them,
cool blues cupping warm bellies,
edges softened where the eye rests too long,
sharpened where a knife of sun insists.

Nothing moves, yet everything leans:
necks crossing, forms braced and countered,
a quiet geometry of weight
worked out in oil and silence.

You can see where the painter lingered —
on a scar, a bruise, a curve almost excessive —
as if beauty arrived late
and had to be persuaded to stay.

No figures. No harvest hymn.
Only matter, colour, and the patience to look
until abundance stops meaning “more”
and begins to mean enough.