This is another sonnet.
This is prompted by a still life by Chardin, Glass of Water
and Coffeepot, which has, as you might expect, a glass of water
and a coffeepot.
But it also has some heads of garlic.
And this poem is partly about the painting,
but it's also partly about the home we have,
Karen and I, in London.
"Glass of Water and Coffeepot."
These rooms of wood, of tongue and groove,
open out on a garden of whitewashed walls
and a maple tree.
A new spring, bright among the weathered stone and brick.
We find things that are old and used, well-made, well-worn,
and beautiful because of this.
The balance, intimate between that glass
of water's clarity and light and the pot's grave darkness.
An order so luminous and fine, you
needn't measure it with a rule.
Just look.
The papery whiteness of the garlic heads
is the same light held in the water glass, the same light
lifting a gleam from the blackened coffeepot
that's somehow managed to make it through to find harmony here
on this stone shelf--
happiness of the hand and heart to keep its heat
and still pour clean and true.