Psalm 131
she paints a still life— its bowl of golden apples
waiting whole on time’s table, in flit
and flicker of candle flaming through the pane
of a dimmed window; a round loaf risen
beneath the days broken beside a scarlet rose
limp, woven; and lone daisy, a vase’s grazing
of death and life, wound; while at the table’s rim
two seashells sound brushed thin with the sands
of soft shore and at its core, a pale skull,
the careful sockets reminiscent of that gray
Golgotha, what is ours. . . so she paints in stilled light
beneath the divine life rising above shadows
of the illumined table of still beauty and quiet soul.