Rectangles of light fall on Mount Sainte-Victoire,
as the colors shift, and evening’s violet cashmere
softens the landscape.  I’d like to edit out 
the industrial world, keep only the ochre hills, the dark 
umbrella pines, the cold blues of the mountain and sky.
Give me life without newspapers, e-mail, and faxes,
TV, DVD, video, radio; let me sit in the sun like a cat
while patches of shadow move over my arms
as the day wears on.  Where breakfast is a flaky
roll that shatters when I bite it, that sings like the sun
in my mouth.  Where lunch is a ripe pear, slab 
of melting cheese, baton of bread, all crust;
and dinner, with its dark wine, white china, heavy silver,
waits like an orchestra tuning up in the wings.  And the mountain
turns lilac, gold, rose; colors the air around it, falls on my hair, 
my crêpe de Chine dress, and, for a while, erases time’s tiny lines, 
restores the smooth planes of my face, puts me back in my younger skin. 
On the last day of my life, I’d like to be working, like Cézanne, 
even if it means being pulled home in a laundry cart and dying of pneumonia. 
I want to be out there, singing, as the rain comes down, solid blocks of purple, blue.

“A painter can say all he wants to with fruit . . . .”  (Edouard Manet)

or even vegetables, these crinkly-skinned onions
on a kitchen table, painted by Cézanne.
What did he want to tell us about their many layers,
their astringent flesh, pungent breath, thin skins?
Was it the way they could fill a plate, nestle in a table
cloth, look like they belonged there, eggs
in a nest?  Or how they add depth to a stew
or a bouillabaisse without becoming the thing itself,
like the notes in a chord, or the blue wash that’s part
of the undercoat, part of the shadow.  Unlike other 
still lifes, these onions are living: green shoots burst
out their tops, electric, wired, a green dance
of new growth.  Green flames singing in the hearth.
Green fingers shooting for the sun.  What else
could he want to say, except that every thing
on this small blue ball is alive, these papery globes,
the throat of the wine bottle, the billions of molecules
that make up my skin and yours, the air between our lips,
charged with energy, the cells that slough off
when they touch, when we love.